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What Happened to the Foshay Bridge?

2009-02-22T11:30:00.000-08:00

The initial proposed decision denied MTA's application at Dorsey and at Foshay, and required MTA to build a pedestrian bridge at Foshay that would have cost $5-8 million to construct. That proposed decision was written by Administrative Law Judge Kenneth Koss and the assigned CPUC Commisioner Timothy Simon, who both have been monitoring this case for the past 2 ½ years. It was they who attended the public hearings at Dorsey in November 2007 and at Foshay in July of 2008. It was they who presided over the week long evidentiary hearing that involved the testimony and cross-examination of over a dozen expert witnesses.

Proving once more that there is truly no low that MTA will not go to push their unsafe design, after the Koss/Simon proposed decision was made public, MTA/Expo spent taxpayer dollars hiring a former Enron lobbyist, Sandra McCubbin, to work to overturn it.

McCubbin and the Expo's high-paid attorney initiated nearly two-dozen backroom/off-the-record meetings with the CPUC Commissioners and staff, and convinced Commissioner Rachel Chong, to author an Alternative Decision to Simon's, that would remove the pedestrian bridge at Foshay that Simon originally found necessary at the end of the trial.

Then Westside politician Zev Yaroslavsky, who doesn't represent any community within miles of Dorsey or Foshay pressured the Commission (pdf) to overturn Simon's previously required pedestrian bridge at Foshay and adopt the Chong Alternative.

Zev Yaroslavsky has advocated for a $5-8 BILLION dollar subway under his community of Miracle Mile, Beverly Hills and Century City, yet he opposes a $5 million bridge at Foshay to protect the South LA students.

Unfortunately, the Zev Yaroslavsky/MTA/Enron-lobbyist pressure worked as the Chong Alternative was approved in a 4-1 decision, with Simon, the only African-American on the Commission, and the Commissioner most intimately familiar with the case being the dissenting vote.

Expo Line Approval: A License to Kill?

2009-01-26T12:22:00.000-08:00

An op-ed by international human factors and rail safety expert Professor Najmedin Meshkati was published in yesterday's Daily News. The title is "Expo Line Approval: A License to Kill?":

The L.A. Country Metropolitan Transportation Authority and its Exposition Light Rail Construction Authority with their army of lawyers, consultants, lobbyists and PR agencies, which are all paid from our tax money, are vigorously pushing and asking for CPUC approval of their at-grade crossings near the two schools. However, the local community organizations and the Los Angeles Unified School District are opposing such at-grade design of intersections. The public's distrust of MTA is rooted in its dismal safety record. Ninety people have died on the MTA's 22-mile L.A.-Long Beach Blue Line, which has had more than 821 recorded incidents since its inception in July 1990 to July 2008. These numbers, which are significantly higher than national average rates of accidents and fatalities along the MTA rail network, attest to the dire state of rail safety in LA, which is primarily caused by MTA's outdated and messy safety-related policies, procedures and practices.

If the CPUC has not learned its lessons about the human factors-related root-causes of past rail accidents, and does not fully scrutinize MTA's proposed crossings' risk and hazard analyses, then CPUC's "easy" approval will be tantamount to granting MTA and its Expo Line Construction Authority a license to kill and maim school children and adults on the Expo Line for the next decades to come, as approximately 72 million Dorsey students who will use the Farmdale Avenue crossing during the expect life of operation of this line. The CPUC's approval would provide MTA with the alibi - the "design immunity" in legalese - for so doing.

Here is the full article:

Expo Line Approval: A License to Kill?

The Metrolink crash in Chatsworth on Sept. 12, which killed 25 and injured more than 135 innocent people, highlighted the need for much more rigorous government scrutiny of rail safety in the country and especially in Southern California. It is against this sober backdrop that we -- the badly hit Southlanders -- are pleading and looking up to the north for a protector from future rail carnages.

This Thursday, Jan. 29. the five commissioners of the California Public Utilities Commission are expected to vote on and announce their final decision concerning the design of key street crossings in phase 1 of the Exposition Light Rail, or Expo Line, project planned from downtown Los Angeles to Culver City. It will cross major busy city streets such as Vermont, Western, Farmdale and Crenshaw.

There are rare occasions that a San Francisco-based state agency's decision can determine the risk to life and safety of millions school children in Los Angeles for the next 75 to 100 years. However, this CPUC's decision will be a precedent-setting case and there certainly will be future similar cases elsewhere in California, and as such, many more lives will be at risk.

In fact, the term "light rail" is a bit of a misnomer. Each of the three-coupled 225-ton train cars will operate at speeds of up to 55 miles per hour. Expo Line trains will run every 2 to 2.5 minutes, 22 hours a day, in opposite directions on parallel sets of dual tracks and will cross Farmdale Avenue at street level (at-grade), within 10 feet of Dorsey High School, which has 2,100 students, and will cross Western Avenue and Harvard Blvd., also at street level, within 50 feet of the Foshay Learning Center, which is a K-12 Multi-Track School with 3,400 students.

The L.A. Country Metropolitan Transportation Authority and its Exposition Light Rail Construction Authority with their army of lawyers, consultants, lobbyists and PR agencies, which are all paid from our tax money, are vigorously pushing and asking for CPUC approval of their at-grade crossings near the two schools. However, the local community organizations and the Los Angeles Unified School District are opposing such at-grade design of intersections. The public's distrust of MTA is rooted in its dismal safety record. Ninety people have died on the MTA's 22-mile L.A.-Long Beach Blue Line, which has had more than 821 recorded incidents since its inception in July 1990 to July 2008. These numbers, which are significantly higher than national average rates of accidents and fatalities along the MTA rail network, attest to the dire state of rail safety in LA, which is primarily caused by MTA's outdated and messy safety-related policies, procedures and practices.

If the CPUC has not learned its lessons about the human factors-related root-causes of past rail accidents, and does not fully scrutinize MTA's proposed crossings' risk and hazard analyses, then CPUC's "easy" approval will be tantamount to granting MTA and its Expo Line Construction Authority a license to kill and maim school children and adults on the Expo Line for the next decades to come, as approximately 72 million Dorsey students who will use the Farmdale Avenue crossing during the expect life of operation of this line. The CPUC's approval would provide MTA with the alibi - the "design immunity" in legalese - for so doing.

The concept of "design immunity," which is based upon an otherwise obscure California Government Code § 830.6, would potentially entitle MTA to avoid liability for dangerous condition of its designs and grant MTA with complete immunity against any type of claim arising out of its design defect. It was precisely the CPUC's lax approval of the Blue Line's more than 100 crossings back in late 1980s that left us to live with the persistent dangerous condition which is a major root-cause of its many fatalities and accidents (the last two accidents happened just in one day, on Thursday, Nov. 20.)

Moreover, the automatic "design immunity" entitlement of MTA has also been responsible for the status quo, as well as stifling any motivation and imputes within this agency for any fundamental change and systematic safety improvement. Neither numerous deaths and the resulting protracted litigations, nor trail or appeal court's affirmative rulings against MTA in favor of the rail accident's victim (plaintiff), have been able to make a dent in the MTA's dismal safety practices.

This time around, the CPUC approval of MTA's requests for the Expo Line would do the same. It will not only continue to shield MTA's unsafe crossings and operation against any future lawsuits stemming from accidents and resultant injuries and deaths caused by design-induced errors of pedestrians and drivers on the Expo Line, but also will further hardened MTA's entrenched archaic safety culture.

It is truly perplexing that the Exposition Light Rail Construction Authority, even in this dismal state economy, is still continuing to squander millions of dollars of precious taxpayers' money by lavishly paying for thousands of pages of legal briefs, stubbornly fighting neighborhood community organizations, and recklessly disparaging scientific facts which justifiably question and refute its proposed designs. This is the money that should have been spent on making the Expo Line safer and our hope is that the CPUC puts an end to this vicious cycle.

The CPUC of today has much greater competent technical resources and it can (and should) learn from other agencies such as the National Transportation Safety Board and do much better job than what it did some 30 years ago and consequently we are stuck with the Blue Line's unsafe intersections. We can only hope that what the American philosopher William James said, "great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed," also applies to California and its PUC.

Najmedin Meshkati is a professor at the Sonny Astani Department of Civil/Environmental and a professor at the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISE) at the Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California. He teaches and conducts research on the safety of technological systems and created USC's Transportation Safety Program in 1992. Robert "BJ" Takushi, a recent graduate of the Epstein ISE Department, received a grant from the Rose Hill Foundation to study the Expo Light Rail safety.

Responding to MTA Spin & Deception

2008-12-01T07:15:00.000-08:00

In October, the Expo Line Construction Authority, which has been placing expensive full-page ads in black newspapers, held a "Q & A" with the editors of the LA Sentinel.

As will be explained in a follow-up post, this is a component of the spin and smear campaign currently being waged by Expo through their $167,453 "public relations" contract with the firm Dakota Communications, a specialist in Astroturf and other dirty public relations tactics.

UPDATE: Click here to download this is pdf format.

The following is a comprehensive response to the spin, red herrings, and half-truths delivered by MTA/Expo.

The Sentinel: The Los Angeles Sentinel recently held an editorial board meeting to address many residents’ concerns over the ongoing Expo-Line. Participating at the meeting on behalf of the Expo Line were Exposition Construction Authority CEO Samantha Bricker, Council members Bernard Parks (D-10) and Jan Perry (D-9) and representing the community were Cherisse Bremond-Weaver, president of the Brotherhood Crusade and activist Lillian Mobley.

1) Samantha Bricker is the C.O.O. of Expo, not the C.E.O.; Rick Thorpe is the C.E.O. Ms. Bricker does not live in the South LA community. Indeed none of the Expo project managers or executives live in the South LA community.

2) The work Mrs. Bremond-Weaver is doing at Brotherhood Crusade is phenomenal, and Ms. Mobley is a Watts icon who we all owe a debt of gratitude. But don't you think a much fairer Q & A would have included some of the leaders of the community groups who have intimate knowledge of this project, and are accustomed to responding to the spin from the Expo Authority and our politicians? If MTA/Expo is sending their lead spokesmen to answer community questions, why wouldn't a lead spokesman of Fix Expo be the person asking the questions?

Channeling Upton Sinclair's quote that, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it," one of the first questions Fix Expo would have asked of Council Members Bernard Parks and Jan Perry is how much money have their campaigns received from MTA/Expo contractors and developers who stand to benefit from the construction of the line? (See our demand for an immediate investigation into ethics law violations of our Council Member and MTA Board Member Bernard Parks.)

Our elected officials are making decisions downtown that benefit their personal political ambitions at the expense of South LA, and they refuse to come to the community meetings to be held accountable and face the hard questions.

MTA/Expo Spin: This project has been on the drawing board for many years. Metro acquired the Exposition railroad right-of-way from Southern Pacific railroad in 1991.

THE FACTS: From the beginning through the end of the environmental review process, the community has had the same concerns with the design of the Expo Line that every informed community has with light rail lines: safety, traffic impacts, noise and vibration, and community division. MTA’s own Expo Line environmental review documents show comments about safety and requests for grade separation were recorded as far back as 1993.

The people spoke. The politicians didn't listen. The politicians didn't lead.

The bigger point however, is that there is a vast discrepancy in the way the politicians and MTA/Expo responded to the concerns of Culver City vs. the way they responded to the concerns of South LA. The major concerns were the same; they were equally legitimate. But the manner of response by MTA/Expo and the resulting community impacts for the next 100 years are as different as night and day.

MTA/Expo Spin: The line will include the same safety features as the Pasadena Gold Line, which is one of the safest light rail lines in the country.

THE FACTS:
1) MTA/Expo is not building a Pasadena Gold Line; they’re building a Blue Line, which with more than 821 accidents and 91 deaths is the deadliest most accident-prone light rail line in the country. MTA/Expo knows it and they refuse to admit it.

As has been proven by international experts in transportation system safety, the Expo Line and the Pasadena Gold Line have more differences than commonalities, and it is the differences on the Expo Line that pose the hazardous risks and community impacts to South LA. MTA/Expo's claim that the lines are similar is inaccurate and deceptive. Essentially, MTA/Expo is claiming that if a little Ford Pinto has seat belts and a Hummer has seat belts, the Pinto is just as safe as the Hummer.

2) MTA/Expo's definition of “safe” is tragically different from the rational definition of safe, as evident by their operation of the deadliest light rail system in America, and Metrolink’s operation of one of the deadliest commuter rail networks in America.

Only MTA/Expo consider this "safe" (Gold Line accidents):

(from waltarrrrr's flickr)

Most reasonable people consider this "safe":

Underground train crossing:

Elevated train crossing:

MTA/Expo Spin: When the light rail is “street running” the line travels parallel to the street and the train operates with the traffic signals. [….] No gates are necessary in these street running sections since the train will be moving with parallel traffic. The street running section is roughly from the Pico Station downtown to Gramercy.

THE FACTS: According to MTA's June 2008 Summary of Blue Line accidents, 92% of the 647 recorded vehicular accidents on the Blue Line, the deadliest most accident-prone light rail line in the country, have occurred in the street-running section, and 76% of the 821 total accidents recorded on the Blue Line have occurred in the street-running sections. Again, 76% of the total accidents and 92% of all vehicular accidents occur in the street-running section, despite the fact the section only accounts for 25% of the line’s length.

The bigger point of course, is a 225-ton train traveling 35 mph will kill you just as dead as a 225-ton traveling 55 mph:

In fact, a Gold Line train traveling just 10 mph struck and crushed an SUV like a potato chip bag, derailed the train, and sent 7 people, including the train operator, to the hospital. All of the Pasadena Gold Line accidents pictured/YouTubed are of accidents where the train was operating between 10-20 mph.

And the Blue Line killed an elderly couple when the train was traveling just 10 miles per hour:

"Two people were killed Thursday night when their car collided with a Blue Line commuter train in Long Beach, authorities said. [....] Authorities said the train had slowed to 10 m.p.h. in preparation for a stop at the Transit Mall Station, near the southern terminus of the commuter line. The impact crushed the car against the station platform, RTD officials said.

MTA/Expo Spin: The Blue Line was built almost 20 years ago and technology has advanced substantially since then.

THE FACTS: The age of the Blue Line is a red herring, intended to distract the public from the actual reasons the Blue Line is the deadliest light rail line in the country, which were identified in MTA's own 1998 document, in the section titled, "What Makes the Metro Blue Different from Other Light Rail Systems?"

There is absolutely no mention of system age among the factors listed in the 1998 MTA report. The causes determined are all behavioral or environmental and have to do with the operation of the line. The conditions on the Blue Line are replicated or worse on the Expo Line.

If age and lack of "technology" are the primary reasons a rail line is more deadly, then one would expect other systems, which are much older and have FEWER safety mitigation measures to have more deaths and accidents, correct? But the stats show that this is NOT the case.

In 2002, USA Today surveyed the American Public Transportation Association statistics on light rail deaths from the Blue Line’s inception date in 1990 to 2002 and found that in all categories the Blue Line was by far the deadliest light rail system in America. Almost all of the systems are OLDER than the Blue Line and have fewer or similar safety mitigation measures as the Blue Line, yet they all have a fraction the number of deaths as the Blue Line.

The fundamental difference is that in major American cities like New York City, Chicago and Washington, D.C. lengthy urban rail systems with frequently running trains intended to carry nearly 100,000 people a day are built primarily grade separated (no street crossings and primarily underground or elevated) in the urban core.

MTA/Expo Spin: The Blue Line has 104 crossings, while the Expo Line has only 38 crossings, including 11 grade separated crossings where the trains are separated from vehicles and pedestrians.

THE FACTS: Expo has 57 crossings, including 19 that it shares with the Blue Line from 12th/Flower to Washington/Flower. Indeed, the Flower St section of the Blue Line is the most accident-prone section of light rail in the country. In that 0.6-mile portion 154 accidents were recorded in 18 years - an average of 9 per year in just a little over 1/2-mile. It's a testament to MTA's callous disregard for safety that, not only have they neglected the problems in this portion, they now propose DOUBLING the number of trains in the most accident-prone section of light rail in the country!

And what exactly is MTA/Expo's point in comparing the number of crossings? Are they insinuating that we'll only have half the number of deaths on the Expo Line as the Blue Line?

That the Expo Line will only be the SECOND deadliest light rail line in the country?

That instead of 500 deaths and 4500 accidents in the 100-year life of the project (the current pace of the Blue Line), Expo will just have 250 deaths and 2250 accidents?

MTA/Expo's line of reasoning can only be defined as legally insane.

Additionally, even MTA's own report shows they're expecting accident rates on Expo to be HIGHER than the Blue Line. (More about that later)

MTA/Expo Spin: Further, Expo Line has quad gates which go across the entire intersection and make it impossible for cars to drive around the gates and beat the train. The Blue Line does not have quad gates at all gated crossings.
[....]
Both the Gold Line to Pasadena and Expo lines feature quad gates, pedestrian gates and swing gates at the gated crossings in addition to the horns and warning bells.
[....]
The Blue Line is next to a freight railroad which causes more cars to try to go around the gates and “beat the train.”
[....]
When the train is in semi-exclusive right-of-way, it can run at speeds up to 55 mph provided the right-of-way is fenced and the at-grade crossings are protected by gates. These quad gates have been successfully implemented on the Gold Line and prohibit drivers from driving around the gates.

THE FACTS:
1) In a decision that denied MTA's street-level crossing application at the Del Mar crossing on the Pasadena Gold Line, which was later overturned by the full CPUC board, the CPUC judge said:

"The laudatory endorsement of safety provided by gates, even the new 4-quadrant gates, do not satisfy us for all circumstances. If gates were the definitive solution to crossing protection there would never be instances where drivers crash through them on their way to an accident."

The Judge would prove to be right.

Defining sad irony, on the first day of the Expo Line evidentiary hearing on the MTA/Expo's proposed crossings next to Dorsey and Foshay there was an accident at the Del Mar crossing that left an elderly motorist injured.

And just last year, one of the most horrific accidents in MTA’s history occurred at a crossing with four-quad gates where the motorists ran through the crossing gates and was hit by a train enflaming both the train and car, and sending many to the hospital:

It's a miracle that the driver of the vehicle survived.

2) Nearly all of the light rail systems that are less deadly and accident-prone than the Blue Line don’t have 4-quad gates.

3) Nearly 90% of the Expo Line street-level crossings (40 out of 46) don't even have basic crossing gates, including the major intersections of Washington/Flower, Adams/Flower, Jefferson/Flower, Vermont/Exposition, Normandie/Exposition, Western/Exposition and Crenshaw/Exposition, and several other intersections that are on children’s major routes to school.

The 6 intersections of the 46 street-level crossings that do have 4-quad gates have their own sets of problems. For example, Fire Station 34 is 150 feet from the 7th Ave/Exposition crossing, which uses the intersection to serve the Leimert Park community to the south (see image to the left).

Crossing gates at 7th Ave intersection and others (notably Arlington/Exposition) will restrict access 40% of the time during rush hour. Any plan that impedes emergency service access is by definition unsafe.

4) Again, MTA's own 1998 study stated that the reason motorists are more apt to try to "beat the train" both at crossings with gates and at crossings without gates is driver frustration due to slower traveling speeds around the Blue Line:

"The increased truck traffic results in increased driver frustration due to slower street traffic speeds. This frustration may result in increased crossing gate running and illegal left turns."

Traffic congestion is just as bad in most locations, and worse in others around the Expo Line.

MTA/Expo Spin: The Expo Line will be a state of the art rail line employing the latest technology. Safety features include LED train approaching lights, photo enforcement at signal controlled crossings, left turn pockets and left turn arrows at all at-grade crossings where left turns are permitted as well as signage, striping, enhanced crosswalks, and pedestrian countdown timers.

THE FACTS: MTA/Expo is like a used-car salesman pitching a Ford Pinto by promoting the "state of the art" electric windows and wind-shield wipers.

Signs, flashing lights, and fences are "state of the art?" Is this a project being built in 2008 or 1908?

Only in 1950, would left-turn pockets and left turn arrows be considered "state of the art."

At-grade rail was the primary mode of public transportation in the late 1800s and early 1900s and it was abandoned when traffic and personal automobiles were introduced. Most major cities replaced their high ridership trolley lines with elevated lines and subway lines, not 225-ton street-level rail lines traveling at 35 and 55 mph. The Brooklyn Dodgers got their name from the vast number of trolley lines that used to track through Brooklyn causing residents to constantly dodge trains. Sadly, MTA/Expo’s street-level light rail agenda promises to bring new relevance to the Dodger moniker in L.A.

MTA/Expo are taking us "back to the future."

MTA/Expo Spin: Both lines also feature LED Train Approaching signs as well as striping and signage.

THE FACTS: The Blue Line has LED Train Approaching signs, striping and signage too, yet accidents and deaths still frequently occur. Signage isn’t the main reason trains hit cars and people. Indeed, too much signage leads to driver/pedestrian confusion.

MTA/Expo Spin: The Expo Line also has photo enforcement at all signal controlled crossings.

THE FACTS: It's a sad testament to MTA/Expo that they're actually proposing a safety mitigation measure that will make intersections less safe. As Fix Expo explained in our CPUC Reply Brief, photo enforcement has been removed or banned in many municipalities and states around the country because it has been proven to make intersections LESS SAFE:

a. Urban Transit Institute: “The results do not support the conventional wisdom expressed in recent literature and popular press that red light cameras reduce accidents. [….] In many ways, the evidence points toward the installation of RLCs as a detriment to safety.”

b. The most recent of several Virginia Department of Transportation/Federal Highway Administration studies of photo red light enforcement in large Virginia counties, concluded that the RLCs lead to an increase in the number of accidents, specifically an increase in total crashes at intersections, increase in rear-end accidents, and increase in the frequency of injury crashes.

c. In 2005, the Washington Post published the results of their study of the District of Columbia’s photo red light cameras:
“The Post obtained a D.C. database generated from accident reports filed by police. The data covered the entire city, including the 37 intersections where cameras were installed in 1999 and 2000. The analysis shows that the number of crashes at locations with cameras more than doubled, from 365 collisions in 1998 to 755 last year. Injury and fatal crashes climbed 81 percent, from 144 such wrecks to 262. Broadside crashes, also known as right-angle or T-bone collisions, rose 30 percent, from 81 to 106 during that time frame. Traffic specialists say broadside collisions are especially dangerous because the sides are the most vulnerable areas of cars.” -D.C. Red-Light Cameras Fail to Reduce Accidents

The fundamental question is why is the “safety” being provided by MTA/Expo for South LA consist of signs, flashing lights, cameras and stripping, while the safety being provided by MTA/Expo for Culver City consist of 100% grade separation?

David Solow, the Executive Director of Metrolink said, "Every at-grade crossing is an accident waiting to happen." We at Fix Expo agree.

Sentinel Question: With the recent Metrolink tragedy, many residents are concerned about trains sharing tracks. Will the Expo Line share tracks with freight trains or will it have its own dedicated track?
MTA/Expo Spin: The Expo Line will have its own dedicated track and will not share any track with freight trains.

THE FACTS:
1) The root cause of the horrific Chatsworth accident is a flawed cost-benefit safety analysis by our region's politicians and transportation agencies that led to a failure to invest in two separate grades for two separate rail modes (freight and commuter rail). The same fundamental/systemic problem, a flawed cost-benefit safety analysis that has tragic repercussions, has led to the current unsafe Expo Line design.

Additionally, like Metrolink’s shared tracks with freight trains, at Expo Line street-level crossings the high-speed, frequently running Expo Line trains will share the same grade with cars and pedestrians. “Grade separated” is when cars/pedestrians cross on a separated level from train tracks. Just as the Chatsworth tragedy would have never occurred if freight tracks were separated from Metrolink tracks, Expo Line accidents and deaths would not occur if the Expo Line were grade separated from cars/pedestrians.

2) The Expo Line does share tracks with the Blue Line, in ironically in the most accident-prone section of light rail the country (between 12th St/Flower and Washington/Flower), as referenced above.

Additionally, many of the light rail systems listed on the USA Today chart above that have killed a fraction of the number of people run near freight railroads as well. Again, MTA/Expo refuses to address the results of their own 1998 study.

Sentinel Question: What safety measures are you planning to have at the Farmdale Avenue crossing near Dorsey High School?
MTA/Expo Spin: The current proposal, based on the certified environmental documents for the project approved by the Metro Board in 2005, is for the Farmdale crossing to be at-grade. The intersection is currently controlled only with a stop sign. Improvements for the intersection include signalization along with vehicle gates, pedestrian gates, LED train approaching lights and a pedestrian plaza for students to wait.

THE FACTS: The fact that the Farmdale crossing was environmentally cleared to be at-grade speaks volumes to the flawed safety evaluation of MTA/Expo. As international rail safety expert Russ Quimby said:

"If the proposed crossings at Western Ave. and Farmdale Avenue do not qualify for grade separation from a safety perspective, then no crossings would."

Even the CPUC Judge said the Farmdale crossing was not safe (pdf):

"All of these gates, however, can be avoided easily by pedestrians. Considering the large number of crossings during peak periods, and the student populations using the crossing, we find that any system of gates or other warning devices at-grade would not eliminate all potential safety hazards."

MTA/Expo Spin: Furthermore, Metro has offered to slow down the train to 10 mph in the hour when school starts and the hour in the afternoon when school lets out to ensure that students follow the rules.

THE FACTS:
1) MTA/Expo has never offered to slow the train down in writing, a fact that was recognized by the CPUC Judge:

"MTA will be the operator of the line, and Expo Authority did not offer any additional testimony, or support from MTA, regarding the slowing of trains at Farmdale Ave."

MTA/Expo has only said they would be willing to slow down the trains in their desperate attempt to get approval for their unsafe street-level crossing. They first said they'd slow it down to 35, then 25, then 10.

And all the while, MTA’s rail safety manager, Vijay Khawani, has bragged that if they had to agree to slow down the trains to get initial approval from the CPUC to build the tracks across Farmdale at street-level, MTA would just petition to speed it back up. (The allowable limit, and the limit requested in MTA/Expo’s CPUC application for Farmdale is 55 mph):

"[A]nother Del Mar and Ave 45 and Ave 50 situation. Until someone else comes along and wants to speed it up!"

The email is to the left. MTA received approval by the CPUC to operate trains across Del Mar, Ave 45 and Ave 50 on the condition that the trains would operate at restricted speeds. Months later, the MTA petitioned/pressured the CPUC to increase the speed limits of the crossings. Accidents have occurred at each of the crossings, including just a couple of months after Mr. Khawani's email at the Del Mar crossing. (Pictures and video footage of the Del Mar and Ave 50 accidents are in this post).

The allowable limit, and the limit requested by MTA/Expo in their CPUC application for Farmdale is 55 mph, just a stones throw from Dorsey HS.

2) As has been explained to MTA/Expo by both the CPUC’s rail crossing engineering section (as shown in the email linked above), and international rail safety expert Russ Quimby, inconsistent train speeds makes the crossing even less safe. Excerpts from the cross examination of Maj. Russ Quimby at the CPUC evidentiary hearing:

Maj. Quimby’s Answer: And what happens is if you slow the trains down, your window of hazard lengthens. And then you get the condition, the population to believe, well, the train is slow. It’s hard to judge a train coming head on at you with a headlight on. And that basically causes the students, emboldens them to basically say, well, the train is only going ten miles an hour, I can beat it, and run across the tracks in front of the trains. I guess in [National Transportation] Safety Board studies that we’ve done you end up creating as many problems as you solve by slowing the train down. You just create a longer window of opportunity or hazard.

Expo’s Question: And your statement that the students would be embolden to run across the tracks, what do you base that on?

Maj. Quimby’s Answer: Well, they’re going very slow, and you got students who are impatient and standing there waiting for a slower train to go by, and they feel like they have more time to beat the train across the tracks.

MTA/Expo Spin: Further, Metro has offered to post Sheriff’s deputies at the crossing during these same time periods to ensure student safety.

THE FACTS: There are school police officers and Dorsey staff at the Farmdale crossing TODAY and the intersection is still chaos with jaywalking, walking into moving traffic, teenagers, being teenagers:

If a handful of Sheriff’s deputies can control 700 urban high school teenagers stampeding across the Farmdale intersection at rates up to 108 per minute they shouldn’t be working for the LA County Sheriff they should be serving in the Marines in the Baghdad Triangle.

And again, there was not then and there is not now any written agreement proposed.

MTA/Expo Spin: These safety features replicate similar safety features employed by the Pasadena Gold Line near Blair High School, which has a light rail crossing at-grade right near that school. Blair High School is near the Pasadena Gold Line but the students must cross the tracks to get to the bus drop off and pick up area. As a result, hundreds of students must cross the tracks each day.

THE FACTS: Attempting to compare Blair HS to Dorsey HS speaks to the desperation of the MTA/Expo. Even the CPUC Judge didn't fall for it:

"The parties discussed several other crossings at or near school sites along other light-rail lines. However, none of these cases presented the unique characteristics of the proposed Farmdale crossing at Dorsey."

Blair HS is nothing like Dorsey HS. To begin with the closest opening to Blair High School is 2 blocks, two traffic signals and 900 feet away from the closest Gold Line crossing, while the Expo Line literally abuts the Dorsey HS campus.

Dorsey HS proximity to the closest Expo Line crossing:

Blair HS proximity to the closest Pasadena Gold Line crossing:

In the 15 minutes after school at the Farmdale crossing, 700 Dorsey students cross the tracks, in upwards of 108 per minute. Comparatively, in the 30 minutes after school at the Glenarm crossing, less than 114 Blair HS students cross the tracks. Rarely is there ever more than a handful of Blair students standing at the crossing when a Gold Line train approaches:

And under what flawed definition would the picture to the left be something a person would consider “safe?” It’s as though MTA/Expo is saying, “We made these mistakes before, so allow us to continue making them.”

Sentinel Question: What safety provisions will the Expo Authority put in place to protect students near the Foshay Learning Center crossing?
MTA/Expo Spin: There is a current underground pedestrian crossing at the Foshay learning center which is operated by LAUSD.

THE FACTS: MTA/Expo's assumption that the Harvard pedestrian tunnel can or should remain open all hours of the day, displays their level of insensitivity to our community, and true lack of concern for our general welfare.

For the same reasons many pedestrian tunnels across the city have been closed, the Harvard Ave pedestrian tunnel is closed 23 hours a day, only open when it can be staffed by school volunteers the 30 minutes before and after school, and access is limited to students. Simply, the pedestrian tunnels are crime magnets, homeless encampments, the location of rapes and robberies. For this reason, the CPUC judge found the tunnel unsafe:

"The tunnel also presents other access and security issues. Left open and without supervision, the tunnel provides a convenient location for crime (theft, robbery, assault, etc.), and also presents other problems related to sanitation and public health. Because of these safety and security issues, the tunnel currently is open only during the approximate 30 minute period before and after school hours; and, operation of the tunnel is supervised by adult volunteers (mostly parents and others associated with Foshay)."

The remainder of the public and students arriving/departing the campus all other times of the day (i.e. for after-school activities and to use the health clinic on campus) would either have to hop the MTA/Expo fence or cross at Western or Denker. MTA/Expo has closed the other three crossings between Western and Denker: Harvard St, La Salle and Hobart Blvd. Western and Denker are the bigger issue. Even before MTA/Expo divided the community by putting up barriers for the 1/3rd-mile between Denker and Western, the large majority of Foshay students crossed at Denker and Western. 400 students use the tunnel after school, while over 1100 use Western and over 300 use Denker.

MTA/Expo Spin: There will also be a fence so that students cannot cross the street illegally in this area.

THE FACTS: A fence to a middle-schooler is an invitation to climb. In meetings with MTA/Expo the Foshay administrators told them of students scaling the 20-foot fence on the edge of the campus, yet MTA/Expo has proposed a fence that is less than 4 feet tall in some places (the law limits fence heights near intersections for visibility reasons).

And MTA/Expo clearly doesn't learn from past mistakes. In 1999, 13-year old Gilberto Reynaga hopped a fence that divided his community on his way home from playing basketball and was killed by a Blue Line train:

"'Every day we fear that something like this could happen,' said Mabel Cail, who lives in the victim’s apartment complex next to the rail corridor near Long Beach Avenue. The neighborhood has large numbers of children, she said, who constantly crisscross the freight and passenger tracks."

MTA/Expo Spin: There will also be at-grade crossings at Western and Denker, where the train will be traveling with the traffic signals at the posted speed limit not-to-exceed 35 mph, and students can cross with pedestrian countdown timers and signals.

THE FACTS: The Expo Line around Foshay will operate in a street-running design traveling at 35 mph. The operation of the line will be nearly identical to the manner in which the Blue Line operates in Downtown LA, where a 19-year old Trade Tech student was hit and put in intensive care in April of this year, 16-year old Angela Barahona was killed in November 2002, and 20-year old Maxmiliana Gomez was killed in April 2007:

"A young woman was fatally run over by a Blue Line train on the south side of downtown Saturday, a fire official said.

"Paramedics were sent to the 1800 block of South San Pedro Street at 12:28 p.m., said Los Angeles city fire spokesperson d'Lisa Davies.

"The Long Beach-bound light-rail train was unable to stop before striking 20-year-old Maxmiliana Gomez. The Blue Line driver stated that a group of three -- two males and Gomez -- attempted to run across the tracks in front of the train. The young woman was unsuccessful in her attempt and she was declared dead at the scene.

"'Maxi Force Airbags' were used to extricate the body from underneath the train, which took an hour.

"The accident delayed service on the downtown-to-Long-Beach line."

These are just some of the youth/youngsters pedestrian deaths and injuries we’ve been able to identify in a similar street-running section on the Blue Line from media reports over the past few years. How many more are there that MTA/Expo won't tell us about, and how many can we expect over the 100 years of the Expo Line?

MTA/Expo Spin: During the environmental planning phase of the project, it was determined that a grade separation was necessary at Figueroa and Flower based on traffic levels at these crossings.

THE FACTS: MTA's original 2001 Expo Line plan was equally bad around Exposition Park and in Culver City as it is currently in South LA. There was an at-grade crossing at Figueroa/Exposition by USC. There were at-grade crossings at Jefferson/National and Washington/National in Culver City. Even as late as the summer of 2005, the Culver City crossings were all designed to be at street-level. All of those intersections were subsequently changed - grade separations were added. No grade separations were added to the section in South LA between Farmdale and Vermont.

MTA/Expo Spin: The complex geometry of the 110 Freeway offramps in that area makes it difficult to build an aerial grade separation.

THE FACTS: An aerial crossing at Flower/Exposition was approved in the 1992 Expo Line environmental document:

Alternative 2a. Flower Street and 29th Street to Vermont Avenue - Part Aerial:
This segment of the alignment would extend from approximately 29th Street, on the east side of Flower Street to Exposition Boulevard to approximately Vermont Avenue. The majority of this profile would be at-grade with an elevated segment between approximately Jefferson Boulevard to approximately 1,000 feet east of Menlo Avenue.

The major drawback of the aerial option is the aesthetic division that would have been created with the ramp down on Exposition Blvd between USC and the Rose Garden from the elevated structure, known as the "retained fill." See the diagram from the 1992 Environmental Impact Report to the right.

Retained fill is basically a concrete wall. Here's what the retained fill at the Firestone Station on the Blue Line looks like:

It's not hard to understand why a concrete wall dividing the Exposition Park Rose Garden and USC campus was not welcomed and the undercrossing option was preferred.

MTA/Expo Spin: As a result, the grade separation will be in a shallow trench which will extend from south of Jefferson Blvd., will go under Figueroa and Flower and will surface at Trousdale Ave, which is in front of USC.

THE FACTS: Exposition Blvd is the back of USC, not the front. And, other than game days, the Trousdale crossing has very low pedestrian traffic. Figueroa is the location where the bulk of the USC pedestrian traffic crosses Exposition today and will in the future. At Figueroa the Expo Line will be underground.

MTA/Expo Spin: USC had requested that the trench continue all the way to Vermont instead of surfacing at Trousdale. USC was told that the trench could continue to Vermont only if USC paid the cost differential of $120 million.

THE FACTS: MTA/Expo consistently inflates the cost of anything they don't want to build, and underestimates the cost of anything they do want to build. In the case of the portion between Trousdale to Vermont, MTA/Expo drastically inflated the construction cost by assuming that a deep tunnel and two dual-level stations with a mezzanine would be required, as opposed to a shallow trench with a single one-level open-air station. Their estimates from Trousdale to Vermont, are as wrong and deceptive as their $100 million estimate for a Farmdale trench. Every independent engineer has been highly critical of MTA/Expo’s plans and heavily padded cost estimates. Russ Quimby's prepared testimony before the CPUC basically claims the inflated estimates of cost and delay are a product of bureaucratic predetermination:

"The cost-benefit analysis presented by Expo appears to be self serving at best with those limited alternatives that were presented lacking any in-depth, unbiased comparison. Costs of alternatives also appeared to be inflated with no supporting documentation in an effort to support Expo's predetermined design."

MTA/Expo Spin: USC declined to pay this cost so the line surfaces at-grade at Trousdale

THE FACTS: More so than any other statement, MTA/Expo's assertion that the safety and preservation of a community should be predicated on the community’s ability to pay for it illustrates why the agency is constantly engaging in environmental racism. The process by very definition leads to projects that are built better in more affluent communities than in poorer/minority communities. South LA residents and businesses pay taxes too!

More to the point however, Fix Expo is as concerned about the at-grade portion from Trousdale to Vermont as we are in other areas. We fought equally hard before the CPUC to keep that section underground as we did west of Vermont to La Brea. We've highlighted the smoking memo by Gloria Jeff, the former head of LA's Department of Transportation, that states the at-grade design between USC and Exposition Park is "not safe for pedestrians" and will lead to major gridlock, along with the CPUC staff request to extend the trench to Vermont. Incidentally, the day that memo was publicly delivered to the MTA Board meeting, Gloria Jeff was fired for undisclosed reasons.

The Fix Expo proposal is to extend the trench to Vermont and establish Vermont as the temporary terminus, while the environmental work is approved to redesign the portion from Vermont to La Brea.

Furthermore, after we spoke with several national environmental justice experts we were informed that the USC community is technically an environmental justice community as well, when considering the economic demographics of the census tract, given that students are technically poor.

Sentinel Question: Why does the Expo Line only go underground near USC and not for the entirety of the project?
MTA/Expo Spin: Light rail projects typically operate at grade.

THE FACTS: The Light Rail Committee of the Transportation Research Board published a report titled, "This is Light Rail Transit" (pdf) that defined light rail not by MTA/Expo's concocted statement that it be built at grade, but instead by it's flexibility to operate in a variety of grades (street-level, underground, elevated, in the median of a freeway, etc.), and fit the needs of the environment (including safety, traffic, community, etc.):

"It was not until the 1970s that the term "light rail transit" came into use in the United States. There was no formal definition of LRT at the time, but it was generally understood to mean an urban rail transit form that was leaner and less costly than other rail modes.

"A formal definition was adopted in 1989 and placed in the Transportation Research Board's Urban Public Transportation Glossary: 'A metropolitan electric railway system characterized by its ability to operate single cars or short trains along exclusive rights-of-way at ground level, on aerial structures, in subways, or occasionally, in streets and to board and discharge passengers at track or car floor level.'

"LRT is designed to accommodate a variety of environments, including streets, freeway medians, railroad rights-of-way (operating or abandoned), pedestrian malls, underground or aerial structures, and even in the beds of drained canals. It is this characteristic that most clearly distinguishes it from other rail modes."

Indeed, several light rail lines are/have been built completely or almost completely grade separated:

The new light rail extension in Pittsburgh is being built in a tunnel: North Shore Connector LRT
The new light rail extension in Seattle has a 3 mile tunnel: University Link LRT
A new St. Louis light rail extension has just one at-grade crossing over 8 miles: Cross County Extension (pdf)
The Boston D Line Branch is grade separated
After the Buffalo Light Rail exits the city core and enters the residential area it enters a tunnel

In fact, even MTA's own light rail Green Line, is 100% grade separated. After the train turns off the 105 freeway in El Segundo it travels on primarily elevated tracks for nearly 4 miles. Incidentally, 4 miles is the same distance Fix Expo request the Figueroa trench be extended through South L.A.

The number of autos hit by MTA’s 100% grade separated Green Line since it opened in 1995 thru 2008: ZERO.

The number of autos hit by MTA’s at-grade Blue Line since 1995 thru 2008: Over 445.

MTA/Expo Spin: There are other at-grade light rail projects in Los Angeles County such as the Gold Line to Pasadena and all over the country, including Portland and Phoenix.

THE FACTS: Los Angeles is in a class of cities that includes New York City, Chicago and London, not Portland (which is about the size of Long Beach), Phoenix, San Diego, or most of the other cities MTA/Expo cite as light rail cities. The backbone of the public transportation system in similar world-cities like New York, Chicago and London is a grade separated rail system - not street-level rail.

And in Los Angeles, we have unique traffic nightmares due to our poly-nuclear region. We agree with the Asst. General Manager of LADOT, John Fisher who said, "[A]ll rail should be grade separated."

With the worst traffic in the country, how are at-grade (street-level) crossings of major streets even being seriously considered? The Expo Line is a 100-year project. Simply comparing how much worse traffic is today, compared to 20 years ago, illustrates to any clear thinking person how and why street-level crossings that will worsen traffic for the next 100 years make no sense.

MTA/Expo Spin: In 2003 Metro adopted a grade crossing policy which developed objective criteria for determining when a crossing should be at-grade or grade separated. The criteria takes into account traffic, safety, engineering concerns and other issues.

THE FACTS: If the MTA's grade crossing policy were applied to the Blue Line, the deadliest light rail line in the country, street-level crossings that collectively have been involved in hundreds of accidents and countless deaths would have still been built at street-level. Indeed, applying MTA's grade crossing policy to the Blue Line would have required some of the few grade separated crossings on the Blue Line to have been built at street-level! This is what MTA/Expo call their "safety policy"?!

The bottom line is, as international rail safety expert Russ Quimby said in his testimony before the CPUC:

"Metro’s Grade Crossing Policy is not a safety-based policy. In fact, as far as I can tell from [Expo Construction Authority CEO] Mr. [Rick] Thorpe’s testimony, the policy has nothing whatsoever to do with safety and is concerned almost entirely with Metro’s operational convenience regardless of safety concerns.

"The policy cannot seriously be described as a safety policy because traffic volume and train frequency alone tell you very little about the safety of a rail crossing, particularly when traffic volume is reported on a per lane basis. As far as Metro’s Grade Crossing Policy is concerned, for purposes of grade classification, a crossing that intersects a single lane street going in one direction with no pedestrian traffic is analyzed identically to a crossing that intersects twelve lanes going in six directions with peak pedestrian traffic in the thousands per hour. As long as train headways and per lane traffic volumes fall within acceptable standards, a crossing will be designed at-grade with no need for further review or analysis.

"The Metro Grade Crossing Policy is a logical operational policy from a rail perspective, but it does not nor should not replace a responsible, comprehensive system safety analysis, which should include a human performance study. The risky designs of these two proposed crossings illustrates the point that factors beyond train frequency and vehicle traffic must be taken into consideration to create designs that are reasonably safe for the public – and particularly for children. If the proposed crossings at Western Ave. and Farmdale Avenue do not qualify for grade separation from a safety perspective, then no crossings would."

MTA/Expo Spin: This grade crossing policy was applied to the Expo Line, and a grade separation at La Brea was added to the project, in compliance with the grade crossing policy. There are also grade separations at La Cienega, Flower/Figueroa and Venice/Robertson, all of which met the criteria of the grade crossing policy adopted by Metro.

THE FACTS: It's very telling that MTA/Expo fails to mention the crossings in Culver City that are grade separated, but did not "meet the criteria of the grade crossing policy": Jefferson/National and Washington/National intersections. The point is, even MTA's flawed grade crossing policy is not objectively applied.

As stated in the federal government's document on the project, Jefferson/National and Washington/National were added to the project because the City of Culver City said they’d oppose the project if it crossed their streets at street-level:

"The original [preferred Expo Line plan] adopted by the [MTA] in 2001 called for at-grade rail crossings at all intersections in the City of Culver City and an at-grade station at Venice/Robertson...This configuration conflicted with the adopted [Culver City] General Plan that called for no at-grade crossings and full grade-separation of all crossings in that city. Primarily for this reason, the City of Culver City opposed the project...in 2001."

As a result of those grade separations, west of La Cienega to the Culver City terminus of Phase 1: no child will ever have to walk across the tracks, no car will ever have to drive across the tracks, no train horn will ever be blown, traffic won't be worsened with crossing gates or street closures, and there is no privacy impact on the directly adjacent residential community.

The City Council of Culver City is to be commended for hearing its residents and standing up to MTA. But when MTA/Expo decided to spend the money for 100% grade separation in Culver City (the only residential area that is middle-to-upper-income and majority Caucasian), and not in the majority-minority and/or poor residential communities it contributed to MTA's violation of environmental justice laws.

MTA/Expo Spin: The light rail trains are electric and so the trains themselves create very little noise.

THE FACTS: Only in comparison to the landing strip of an international airport, do light rail trains “create very little noise.”

Even when MTA’s Pasadena Gold Line trains are slowed down to nearly half the speed that the Expo Line will be traveling and/or use the “quieter horn,” the trains still emit noise in the 85-92 decibels range, which is above the level that noise can cause hearing damage. And on the Blue Line, sound readings have been recorded up to 97 decibels, which puts the train in a noise category with jackhammers!

MTA/Expo Spin: The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) requires bells to sound when a train approaches and crosses an at-grade crossing protected by gates. The CPUC also requires the train to sound a horn prior to entering the crossing. The Expo Authority has proposed stopping the warning bells once the gates are down and will apply to the CPUC to implement some of the measures successfully implemented by the Pasadena Gold Line, including the use of a quieter quacker horn on the trains in non-emergency situations and installing shrouds on the warning bells to focus the noise at the crossing.

THE FACTS: The Gold Line communities definitely don't call MTA's trains or horns quiet:

Civil lawsuit to be filed over Gold Line (Pasadena Star-News 7/28/04):

Attorneys said Tuesday they will represent Gold Line neighbors who complain their quality of life and property values have been eroded because of the train's noise, speed and vibrations.

A civil lawsuit alleging inverse condemnation - something that hurts property values - is expected to be filed in the next few weeks.

The defendants would be the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates the light rail, the Blue Line Construction Authority, which planned it, and the contractors hired to build the Gold Line, said Wayne Kreger, an attorney with the Santa Monica law firm of Verboon, Milstein & Peter.

[....]

“The issue is how loud is it supposed to be, and how loud is it,” Kreger added.

He and his colleagues rode the Gold Line to see the proximity of homes to railroad tracks, Kreger said. “I could not believe that people could sleep in those homes.”

Railing against noise (Pasadena Star-News 12/29/06):

She lives in a modest apartment along the Gold Line. A chicken-wire fence separates her building from the tracks.

Brockman says the whooshing and screeching sounds from the light rail keep her up all night. She has to swallow a sleeping pill to sneak a little shut-eye. Vibrations coming through the walls of her apartment, she says, have been tearing up the grout in the kitchen floor.

"This is terrible - it sounds like a tremor coming through," she says. "I haven't slept in years."

[....]

Only two of the apartments in her complex are rented out. The other tenants left after the Gold Line started running, and few renters have taken their place.

The South Pasadena City Council and citizen's group has requested MTA reveal the results of their noise and vibration measurements that the line is CURRENTLY emitting, and MTA has refused to disclose the information. It is ironic that MTA is refusing to disclose the information because they're being sued for adverse noise and vibration impacts:

"As has been previously explained, MTA and the Construction Authority have been engaged in defending against multiple claims of inverse condemnation involving fifty-plus homeowners in South Pasadena who have alleged in suits filed in Superior Court that the design, construction and operation of the Gold Line have created noise and vibration to an extent that either has physically damaged their properties or has diminished the value of their properties. In addition, at least one property owner has asserted that the mere existence of the pre-existing Gold Line has caused them to spend additional sums to incorporate increased structural elements to reduce the impact from noise and vibration. Although those experts may have conducted tests involving noise and vibration, the results of any such tests are trial materials and are not something MTA is willing to disclose outside of the confines of the litigation, as trial is to begin in early December."

And the Gold Line horn is less loud than the Blue Line horn, which has been increased because it’s killed so many more people:

"Locked into what now is a mature, 10-year-old system that defies a massive overhaul, the MTA struggles to bring down Blue Line casualties with rigorous training of operators like Walden, aggressive law enforcement, and constant tinkering with fences, horn sounds, signal lights, traffic gates and other safety hardware.

"Swing gates, which pedestrians have to pull back, rather than push forward, have been installed at some stations. The sound of the horn has been changed."

When a train begins hitting and killing people, oversight agencies typically require the transportation agency to implement cheap safety upgrades, because after the train is operational, MTA considers grade separation cost-prohibitive. Increasing the sound of the alert system (i.e., increasing the volume of the horn) is a cheap safety upgrade, which is why the Blue Line horn has become louder. The same can be expected to occur on the Expo Line if built at street-level.

MTA/Expo Spin: The environmental document also identified areas along the alignment where noise will need to be mitigated. These mitigation measures include soundwalls, which are being built in the areas identified in the environmental document, such as residential areas.

THE FACTS: There are hundreds of homes, schools and places of worship along the Expo Line between Vermont and Clyde (one block east of La Cienega) where sound walls will not be implemented. There are no sound walls between Vermont and Gramercy Place, and no sound walls on the northside of the tracks between Gramercy Place and La Cienega.

These locations were omitted from the MTA's sound wall list because the need for sound walls is predicated on a project's ASSUMED noise impacts. (If the assumptions are faulty, then sound walls are not required.) Regarding the validity of these sound wall assumptions, MTA's noise impact study came to the conclusion that at Dorsey H.S., just 30 feet from classrooms, a sound wall wasn't needed, despite the assumption that the train would be traveling by at 55 mph and blowing its horn. The Farmdale crossing at Dorsey in many respects is the posterchild for the project's deficiencies.

Additionally, sound walls don't extend across intersections, so even with the best sound walls, communities directly adjacent to crossings will still be adversely impacted.

(A "For Sale" sign at a house next to a Gold Line crossing)

In every single light rail project built by MTA and predecessor agencies (the Blue Line, Green Line and Gold Line), the agency has drastically underestimated the project's adverse environmental impacts, specifically the noise impacts. (More on this in a follow-up post).

MTA/Expo Spin: Light rail trains are electric and so will have a beneficial impact on air quality in the community because it reduces the number of cars on the street that produce harmful emissions.

THE FACTS: MTA’s own EIR says the street-level crossings will increase the traffic at our intersections (compared to traffic without the train) due to traffic signals that have to be lengthened to accommodate the train, street closures, and crossing gates at the few locations they exist. The increased traffic congestion leads to more toxic emissions from idling engines, as was recognized by the LAUSD’s Office of Environmental Health & Safety in a letter dated September 28, 2006:

"Increased traffic and vehicles idling near the school sites, as well as increased dust generated from the light rail will have an adverse effect on the health of school occupants."

The closed streets will also lead to longer local travel patterns, and increased congestion on our major thoroughfares. Residents that would walk across the street to visit their neighbors/go to the corner store are now forced to drive, because of the community division MTA’s train project has created.

MTA/Expo Spin: Community participation is an important part of any major capital infrastructure project and community outreach is a high priority for the Expo project.
[....]
The staff has made presentations about the project at local homeowners groups, neighborhood councils, local businesses and faith based groups.

THE FACTS: In the past 2 years MTA/Expo has refused to debate the Fix Expo Campaign, refused to come to meetings held by some neighborhood councils, refused to come to some community meetings led by those most knowledgeable of the project defects, and/or refused to answer written questions. MTA/Expo has even refused to have an open public forum at their "community meetings," since November 2006! Community members walked out of a meeting it got so bad:

"[W]hen the room was told about the previous day's accidents and the history of substations on MTA's other light rail lines catching fire, the room demanded an on the record question and answer period, only to be forcibly denied by the Expo Authority.

"'We were told that if we wanted to have our comments recorded we had to go in the corner and a court reporter would write them down,' said Jackie Ryan of Save Leimert Neighborhood Coalition. 'I was completely insulted,' she continued."

That April 2008 meeting is the only one since 2001, where community comments were recorded by a court reporter. Instead what typically occurs is Expo finishes their presentations and tells people to ask their questions of staff people positioned along the walls of the room, where asking the same question of four different Expo staff members, frequently results in four different answers. It’s a process so disrespectful to the community that even the press has pocked fun at it:

"Publicist Greg Starosky, Construction Manager Mark Van Gessel and designer Roland Genick made it plain they were at the Senior Center to lecture not to dialogue with strongly curious, polite and disappointed members of the audience.

"The gentlemen from the Expo Construction Authority declined to answer questions, not even uncomplicated ones."

These are divide and conquer tactics intended to keep the meeting participants from being adequately informed about the project’s defects, which need to be addressed. The public relations tactic is exceptional even for MTA. Expo is the only MTA project where there is never an open forum for a question and answer period after staff presentations. Why are we being singled out? Why is MTA/Expo attempting to silence our voices?

Additionally, at some of these stations Expo “Community Relations” representatives have been caught on tape YELLING at community residents who are simply asking questions.

MTA/Expo Spin: As part of the planning process, Metro held 11 large scale community meetings along the Expo corridor, with over 850 attendees, from May 2000 through December 2002. A listing of these meetings is contained in the environmental documents.

THE FACTS: More people have attended the Fix Expo meetings in the past year than in the entire environmental review process, because of the dedicated outreach of the members of the Fix Expo Campaign.

The bottom line is MTA/Expo has systematically excluded vocal critics during Expo's project milestones. And as the Baldwin Neighborhood Homeowners Association said in their complaint to the FTA, many of the groups listed in their environmental document were not contacted and others no longer exist:

"The names of the association[s] were fictitious and could not be verified by the MTA....[T]he President of the Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw Coalition...indicated that she had never heard of these groups. It appears that [MTA] fabricated the names of neighborhood groups with which they had interacted along the Mid-Corridor"

MTA/Expo Spin: Further, working groups were formed during the planning process, which were comprised of residents, stakeholders and businesses along the corridor, who provided input into the project.

THE FACTS: MTA/Expo's "working groups" have never been authorized to make or even seriously discuss major decisions, like where to add grade separations. The working groups existed to talk about the type of trees, the color of the line, the heights of the fences, etc. Furthermore, many of the working groups were flooded with people who don’t live in the South LA community whose only goal is to get the train to Santa Monica as soon as possible.

Here's Fix Expo's offer to MTA: give us the same investment and safety in the 4.5 miles in South LA between Vermont and Clyde (one block east of La Cienega) as the 1 mile between La Cienega to the Robertson terminus in Culver City, and the Fix Expo Campaign will commit to planting the trees.

MTA/Expo Spin: Further, the community relations team has worked with all of the schools along the alignment and has distributed safety information relative to the project as well as other construction related information.

THE FACTS: MTA/Expo doesn't “work with” anyone. MTA/Expo tell people what they are going to do.

For four years the Foshay Learning Center principal requested MTA/Expo come to her school to present the project to the community, parents and school, and for four years MTA/Expo refused. When they finally did show up, it was to tell them about the construction activities.

Regarding the Farmdale crossing at Dorsey, MTA/Expo outright lied to the LAUSD Office of Environmental Health and Safety (OEHS) when they said it was physically impossible to construct a grade separation at Dorsey HS:

"We must make it clear that LAUSD-OEHS believes that the safest solution to potential pedestrian-train conflicts at the Exposition Blvd/Farmdale Ave. intersection is to grade-separate this crossing. However, in discussion with the Expo Authority, we were informed that this approach was not feasible, and would not be considered further."

MTA/Expo Spin: In other cases, there are legitimate concerns regarding construction impacts, noise, safety, and traffic issues and it is our obligation to address these concerns and mitigate them to the extent possible.

THE FACTS: MTA/Expo’s smear campaign against the community leaders and public agencies that have issues with the MTA/Expo’s street-level crossings is not what most people consider addressing concerns.

Sentinel Question: What are the economic benefits of the Expo Line for the community?
MTA/Expo Spin: The Expo Line will provide enormous benefits to the community by providing reliable and affordable access to jobs, health care, and entertainment.

THE FACTS: Building the Expo Line in a trench and/or tunnel in the South LA community, or grade separated like it will be in Culver City, will make the Expo Line an asset instead of a foe to the community. It would allow the Expo Line to operate without having to increase the safety hazards on our already dangerous streets, divide neighborhoods, and impose adverse health and traffic impacts on the South LA communities for 100 years. It would also result in a faster, more efficient and more reliable transportation mode for the region.

Sentinel Question: There appears to be some community opposition to this project. What are the origins of the opposition? What is the basis for the opposition?
MTA/Expo Spin: There is often concern by some residents regarding the change that the project will bring about in the community and fear of that change.

THE FACTS: Einstein said, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." So with MTA’s horrible track record in building light rail lines, particularly through black and brown communities, what thinking person would not have concerns?

Fix Expo has concerns, but we do believe they can be addressed by building the citizen's alternative of a tunnel or trench from Figueora to La Brea. It would allow MTA/Expo to build a project we all could embrace - one that would be a good neighbor to the South LA community for the next 100 years, and doesn't increase the safety risks South LA, our children, the elderly and the disabled face on a daily basis.

It is condescending and characteristic of MTA/Expo to claim some people oppose their current plans due to a “fear of…change." It is MTA/Expo's deceptive tactics, disrespect of community leaders, systematic attempts to exclude open discussion of project issues, track record of failures, and overall callous disregard for safety and communities that has bred resentment, distrust, and skepticism in the South LA community, not "fear of change."

Change is needed…at MTA/Expo and in the Expo Line project!

Video Footage of CPUC Public Hearing on 11/5/07

2008-11-28T03:17:00.000-08:00

On November 5, 2007, at the CPUC Public Hearing at Dorsey High School, about 500 residents, students, parents, teachers, administrators and child advocates packed the auditorium to deliver a message to CPUC Commissioner Timothy Simon and CPUC Judge Kenneth Koss about the Expo Line's proposed primarily at-grade design through South LA.

The hearing was covered in the media in particular by Fox 11 News:

We recorded several more of the statements. In addition to the statements by LAUSD Board Member Marguerite LaMotte, former City Councilmember Nate Holden, and delivered on behalf of Congresswoman Diane Watson, comments from the public can be viewed on the Fix Expo YouTube page:

Continue for videos...

What Would Jesus Do?
Breeves Brogan, an area resident, pleads with the CPUC Commissioner, "So please, in the name of Jesus don't kill any children today. Their blood will be on whoever's hands makes the decision."

Why Not In South LA?
Sharon Rogers of the New Frontier Democratic Club and Los Angeles County Democratic Party Central Committee states, "Culver City children won't have to walk across tracks with 225-ton trains traveling at 55 mph coming up to 30 times per hour, why should ours?"

Other Side of the Tracks
Michelle Colbert of Save Leimert and the Empowerment Congress West Area Neighborhood Council states, "If we accept the line at it's current design South Los Angeles will literally be the other side of the tracks. There is data that shows that black and brown communities are more likely to have hazardous conditions placed in their communities. This dilemma wreaks of environmental racism, and an inferior diminished quality of life. Everything about the current design of this train is egregious and terribly wrong."

Build Smart Transit

Prof. Najmedin Meshkati, the creator of the USC Transportation system safety program, quotes Metrolink CEO David Solow, "Every grade crossing is an accident waiting to happen."
Irwin Davidson, a local property owner reminds MTA that, "It's not acceptable. We're a rich country. We can afford better than the very minimum. What is cheap today will be expensive in the long run."
A native New Yorker states, "It's incomprehensible that you would consider bringing something as important as mass transportation to Los Angeles in the 21st century and having it doing this up and down sort of thing."
A local resident asks, "If the MTA Blue Line was kind of flawed why put another flawed system in?"
Mark Jolles reads from an article that quotes former LACTC Commissioner regarding the Blue Line deaths, "It's not fair to blame motorists. It's a terrible cop-out to blame pedestrians or kids to say they are at fault." Mr. Jolles concludes his personal statement with, "It's not the citizens that are causing problems. It is a low standard of engineering of the crossings."

Dorsey HS Alumni Association
Steve Bagby, president of the Dorsey HS Alumni Association: "As former Deputy of Transportation for the late Congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald to have overseen the Alameda Corridor as I have, I've seen the cut-and-cover - I've seen it be below grade in the communities of Compton and Lynwood, and the city of Los Angeles deserves no less. You cannot put a price on a child's life."

Student Learning & We Wanna Pick Them Up in the Afternoon

Andrea Canty the VP of the Dorsey HS Alumni Association: "The tracks will be so close to the bungalows that are here, which will impede student learning."
Jackie Conkelton a Dorsey surrogate parent and foster parent: "I raise other people's children; I don't want anything to happen to them. And the people who have their own children, they don't want anything to happen to them. We take them to school in the morning and we want to pick them up in the afternoon."

Dorsey Students

Tinisha Brooks, president of the Dorsey Senior Class '08, "If a train going 25 mph can turn a Ford F-150 into a tincan, your child has no hope."
Shellea Daniel of Dorsey ASB, "What if a train derails into this queuing area?"
Afolabi, Dorsey student, "Once the line is operating everyone is going to get distracted."

Kids Will Be Kids

Rev. Donald Wilson of Dorsey Motivated Men: "An Expo Light Rail Line is needed, I do agree with that...but I want this committee to strongly consider how you want to bring it through here through Farmdale...at ground level. This is a very dangerous situation."
Harold Washington of the Sutro Block Club: "It's not safe. I'm a former alumni of Dorsey High, class of '61. I would [have been] the first one to jump that fence and end up being hit by the train."
Thabiti Ambata: "There is no way you can build a gate high enough. Testosterone rules these children."

North Area Neighborhood Development CouncilMike Ureña, president of the North Area Neighborhood Development Council: "I understand the logic of the design, but I think in practice it simply is not going to work. I also want to point out to you that when I was a kid as when you were a kid, we thought we were going to live forever."Treat Us RightNelle Ivory, a passionate veteran Leimert Park activists responds to MTA's proposed holding pen at Dorsey HS, "I asked the manager of Expo - he said they were going to build a holding pen at Dorsey to keep the kids in. That's insulting! I know what a holding pen is, we used to put our cattle in there before we sent them to slaughter. Is that the same thing they're going to do to our kids?"West Adams Neighborhood CouncilHattie Babb of the West Adams Neighborhood Council, which covers the area around Dorsey delivers the neighborhood council's findings and concludes: "Be it resolved that the West Adams Neighborhood Council supports beginning to build the Expo Line below grade from USC trench through South Central Los Angeles as far as the existing $640 million budget will allow."They Don't Tell Us - We Tell Them

Marta Zaragosa of the East Culver City Neighborhood Alliance begins with, "This is not about moving people out of their cars, [off] of the freeways. It's about developers who have been buying property along the line for the last 15 years. And these same developers have given money to our politicians who have run for office."
Julia Ansley, "Our elected representatives in this community, laid down, took a walk, because they want money paid to their campaigns."
Tut Hayes, "You got to recognize that MTA and Expo they don't build transit. This is million dollars worth of construction there's big money in this."
Jackie Ryan of Save Leimert and Leimert Park Business Association states, "You - the community - you here tonight are going to determine how this railroad is going to come."

BREAKING: Judge Denies MTA's Plans at Dorsey & Foshay!

2008-10-24T06:57:00.000-07:00

As covered in:

The Wave - Judge Rules Against Street-Level Expo Line Crossings
Daily Trojan - Commission Judge Blocks Light Rail Work at Crossings
Our Weekly - PUC Judge Denies Expo Line Crossings
LA Times - Judge Throws A Curve at Expo Line
LA Watts Times - Judge Rules Expo Line Unsafe

EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE DAVID LANDS A GOOD ONE ON GOLIATH

In a landmark decision regarding the MTA/Expo Line Construction Authority's two proposed Expo Light Rail Line crossings next to 2,100-student Dorsey HS and 3,400-student Foshay Learning Center, California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Judge Kenneth Koss ruled MTA's plans unsafe, and the community and LAUSD's safety concerns valid. The ruling is a tentative decision that will either be adopted or amended by the full CPUC commission on November 21, and it is a major milestone in a heated struggle pitting a scrappy South LA community coalition with the support of LAUSD, against the MTA and their local elected leaders building the project.

Judge Koss’ influential decision recommends the CPUC deny both proposed crossings and MTA submit the appropriate environmental review documents regarding the alternative options.

This is a major battle victory in a long and unfortunate war.

We are relieved that the Judge heard the concerns of the rail safety experts, traffic experts, LAUSD and the community. And we are regretful that the Commission didn't allow hearings on any of the other crossings, and basically rubber-stamped them believing what MTA said.

Two crossings went to hearing and two crossings were found to be unsafe by the judge. We believe that as the evidentiary hearings on Farmdale and Harvard Avenues revealed, the 'evidence' used by the MTA and Expo Authority to support their assertions that they are building a safe project is both unfounded and has been manipulated. (More on that this weekend)

The manipulation of data, unfounded assertions, and dismissal of valid safety concerns for decades, speaks volumes to the deficient rail safety cost-benefit analysis that our region's transportation agencies and politicians have been implementing with impunity. Our transportation agencies’ Ford Pinto cost-benefit analysis is why the MTA's Blue Line at 90 deaths and over 821 accidents, is by far the deadliest light rail line in the country, and Metrolink is one of the deadliest commuter rail systems in the country.

MTA simply doesn't value life.

For more about our response to possible project delay, the cost of redesigning the crossings, the project's financial background, excerpts from the evidentiary hearing, and excerpts from the Judge's proposed decision, and our requests of our elected representives click here to continue reading...

RE: POSSIBLE PROJECT DELAY

If the Judge's proposed decision is adopted by full CPUC, it may delay the full opening of Phase 1 of the line to Culver City, currently scheduled to begin service in 2010.

And true to form MTA's inflated estimates of delay and cost, exaggeration of impacts of the more expensive elevated and trench options, and undervaluing of the impacts of the cheaper options is a textbook example of a public agency cooking the books. This is their attempt to blackmail the Commission into approving unsafe crossings next to our schools of all places.

First off, since when is building something more quickly more important than building it safely?

Second, let’s look at the facts: On the stand MTA's executive admitted they could build up to the previous station and begin service.

UCA/Fix Expo Question: Assuming the regulatory approvals were granted to operate the line in the segmented way that's described in Exhibit 21, wouldn't Metro then be able to operate the line in that fashion?

Expo Authority Executive Eric Olson's Answer: That would be a decision of the Metro Board to make.

UCA/Fix Expo Question: But again, physically possible; right?

Olson's Answer: I mean, as far as the construction goes, yes.

Exhibit 21 is Pg. 2.4-72 of the Expo Line EIR (large pdf) which reads:
Partial Operation Construction Option

The Partial Operation Construction Option would phase-in LRT operations in three segments as construction milestones are met. LRT operations from 7th Street/Metro Center to the Vermont Station would begin upon completion of this portion of the Project's route in approximately 2008; while LRT operations to the Crenshaw Station would begin upon completion of this segment in approximately 2010. The final segment, from Crenshaw Boulevard to the Venice/Robertson Station, would be scheduled for completion in 2012.

And more importantly, the full line to Santa Monica isn't even scheduled to open until 2014-2015 - at the earliest!

There is no need to rush to compromise safety.

It is more important that we get this right, make the appropriate investments on the front end to save lives - particularly the lives of children, so the public isn't paying on the back-end with accident lawsuits and inexplicable pain from deaths and injury. This is a 100 year project - build it right.

Furthermore, if there is a delay to the project, the delay is of MTA's own making and due to the failure of political leadership to address legitimate community concerns.

As we showed in a post earlier this week, MTA's own documents on this project prove that from its inception, the community has repeatedly and loudly said that the street-level crossings, in particularly near our schools, are not safe and were unacceptable. But out of bureaucratic arrogance and political indifference, MTA and our political leaders have fought the community at every turn.

RE: THE COST OF REDESIGNING THE CROSSINGS

In the backdrop of one of the most horrific train accidents in this country's history that cost us 26 innocent lives, seriously injured and maimed 135 people, and has made our region's public transportation agencies an embarrassment to the world, please tell us that our elected officials and transportation agency bureaucrats aren't claiming that they don't have the money to make the Expo Line safe.

Tell us that they've learned their lesson - unfortunately the hard way.

Tell us that they're not still of the mindset that has led to hundreds of preventable deaths on our tracks like last month’s Chatsworth accident. Tell us they don’t still believe that time and money is more important than saving peoples lives and limbs.

This is the problem with the term "safe." It is by definition a relative term subject to misinterpretation by elected officials.

For example, before the Chatsworth accident it was too expensive to implement positive train control and that segment of track was 'safe.' After the tragedy it is clearly unsafe and the cost of the technology is a drop in the bucket. It shouldn't take multiple deaths and worldwide embarrassment to make our elected officials realize that.

RE: BACKGROUND REGARDING THE FINANCIAL HISTORY OF THE PROJECT

In 2004, MTA pulled this project out of the federal New Starts program, in the process walking away from $320 million federal dollars, saying they'd build the project primarily with state and local money instead, because they wanted to speed up construction. That doesn't sound like an agency that can't afford to build grade separation to me. That sounds like an agency with plenty of financial options.

In the past year alone, MTA has appropriated $222 million extra dollars to the now $862 million project, including $54 million to add an overpass in Culver City to Phase 1 of Expo. And they appropriated these funds while telling us with a straight face that there's no money for additional grade separation in South LA.

It is insulting to the intelligence of the people that have followed this issue to suggest this multi-billion dollar agency led by the most powerful politicians in the county, can't find a way to make the Expo Line safe in our community - particularly right next to our schools.

MTA has the resources. MTA has many options - they can scale the project back for one. The fundamental problem is MTA has and unfortunately continues to lack a concern for safety in South LA.

RE: EXPERT EXCERPTS FROM THE EVIDENTIARY HEARING

At the evidentiary hearing three expert witnesses testified on behalf of the community group including Professor Najmedin Meshkati, an internationally renowned expert in human risk analysis and creator of USC’s Transportation System safety program, Ed Ruszak an nationally-renowned expert in traffic impacts and vehicular accident causation, and West Point graduate and retired Major Russ Quimby, who for 22 years led the rail and rail-transit accident investigation group at the National Transportation Safety Board before he retired in 2007.

Quimby testified that there was a high risk of catastrophic accident from MTA’s street-level crossing plan at Farmdale Ave, which abuts the school's property line, and where after-school every day 700 hundreds of students flood the narrow sidewalks in 15 minutes at rates as high as 108 per minute:

As proposed, the Farmdale Avenue crossing creates a high risk that students will be injured and killed because the proposed safety mitigation measures essentially put the burden on students to maintain their own safety. The proposed crossing also creates a higher risk of a catastrophic accident. [....]

By 'catastrophic accident,' I mean an accident involving fatalities and/or injuries to a large number of people. As proposed, the at-grade Farmdale Avenue crossing creates the notable risk that a catastrophic accident may well occur under one of several different scenarios."

(More excerpts from Quimby's testimony.)

EXCERPTS FROM THE JUDGE'S DRAFT DECISION (link to the full draft decision)

"Expo Authority proposed a state-of-the-art system of gates and other warning devices at the Farmdale crossing, including swing gates to allow pedestrians to exit the rail right-of-way when all other gates are down. All of these gates, however, can be avoided easily by pedestrians. Considering the large number of crossings during peak periods, and the student populations using the crossing, we find that any system of gates or other warning devices at-grade would not eliminate all potential safety hazards."

"The parties discussed several other crossings at or near school sites along other light-rail lines. However, none of these cases presented the unique characteristics of the proposed Farmdale crossing at Dorsey. This issue, therefore, provided little or no weight in our determination of practicability."
[....]
"A.07-05-013, for authority to construct an at-grade crossing at Farmdale Ave. in the City of Los Angeles, should be denied.

"Authorization to construct a light rail line over an existing pedestrian tunnel crossing at Harvard Blvd., in the City of Los Angeles, requested in A.06-12-020, should be denied."

OUR FINAL PLEA TO THE CITY COUNCIL

Prior to the issuance of the decision, we delivered a statement on Wednesday before the LA City Council challenging the other members of the chamber to intervene and persuade our local black council members and MTA who have ignored legitimate concerns and data and instead, "declared war on the very community they were elected to serve and the neighborhood council system in general."

We believe it is now incumbent upon our elected officials from the council members to the congressional leaders, to do the responsible thing and listen to the safety concerns expressed by the experts and Judge, and take into account the impacts to the community and schools of the grade separated options. This is a transportation project that will impact this community and serve this region for 100 years. It is important we have a safe light rail line that is a compliment and a good neighbor to the South LA communities that it passes through.

Our intent is to now go back to the community and discuss this draft decision further, but for now we are relieved that MTA’s unsafe street-level crossing was denied – it is a cause for celebration. Today the judge choose life over the risk of death next to our schools.

Stay tuned for the next community meeting, likely the week after the election.

MTA Pleads the 5th on Expo = Blue Line Questions

2008-10-07T10:55:00.000-07:00

On July 5, 2007, Save Leimert, a lead member of the Fix Expo Campaign, sent a letter to the MTA and Expo Authority Chairs requesting that they essentially admit that they're building another Blue Line with the Expo Line design, and put to paper the design differences between the environment, track alignments, and traffic conditions, between the Expo Line and Pasadena Gold Line. (View the letter)

Expo CEO/MTA executive Rick Thorpe pleaded the Fifth to almost all of the questions asked (see below). "This request is outside the jurisdiction of Expo" was Thorpe's response to 12 of the 14 questions in one form or another.

The fact that MTA/Expo believes they can sell the project as one thing, and then when confronted with facts showing it's another, refuse to answer stakeholders questions, exposes their willful deception and disrespect of the community, which Expo Authority is supposed to serve.

To see Expo/MTA pleading the Fifth, continue reading...

True Rail Problem: At-Grade Deaths - Meshkati

2008-10-02T10:13:00.000-07:00

Professor Najmedin Meshkati's op-ed on grade-crossing deaths, titled "Grade-crossing Deaths Are True Rail Problem" ran in the Daily News:

According to the Federal Railroad Administration, 74 people have died in Metrolink crashes since 1999 in California, out of which 20 have been killed in grade-crossing accidents. Ninety people have died on the MTA's 22-mile L.A.-to-Long Beach Blue Line, which has had more than 821 recorded incidents between its inception in July 1990 and last July.

The above-mentioned, significantly higher-than-national average rates of accidents and fatalities along the Metrolink and MTA rail network attest to the dire state of rail safety, which is primarily caused by outdated and messy safety-related policies, procedures and practices.

One of the requisite pillars for the safety of any modern technological system's safety today is transparent, total-system-oriented accident and incident investigations, including the reporting of them and unfettered access to them by analysts or any interested party. This pillar is either broken or missing at both Metrolink and MTA.

Other serious system-related problems that have plagued our rail safety include the tragically narrow MTA Grade Crossing Policy for Light Rail Transit and the woefully incomplete MTA Grade Crossing Preliminary Hazard Analysis, which has been used in the now-under-construction Exposition light-rail project.

If the link breaks, here is the full text of the op-ed:

Grade-crossing Deaths Are True Rail Problem
By Najmedin Meshkati

If there is a silver lining to the deadly Metrolink crash in Chatsworth last month, it is the heightened attention to rail safety in the country, and especially in Southern California.

At the federal level, the House of Representatives passed sweeping rail-safety legislation last week that requires more rest for workers and technology that can stop a train in its tracks if it's headed for a collision. This rail-safety bill was passed by the Senate this week, and it is expected that President Bush will sign it into law soon.

At the state level, last week the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and its board, chaired by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, voted unanimously to approve a series of safety directives for Metrolink. And last Friday, the Metrolink board of directors unanimously passed a wide-ranging measure to improve safety that included adding a second engineer to some of its trains, using technologies to slow or stop trains when a warning signal is not heeded, and appointing a panel of experts to recommend safety improvements.

These are all good steps. However, it's unrealistic to hope that by showering our transit-rail-system operators with more cash and throwing high technology at their safety problems, we will be much safer.

The lion's share of the earmarked funds are for new devices that could only slow down or stop a train locally or remotely, as in the case of positive train controls. They would not have any impact whatsoever on the other major causes of deaths on the tracks on our light-rail and high-speed commuter rail systems, which are grade-crossing accidents.

According to the Federal Railroad Administration, 74 people have died in Metrolink crashes since 1999 in California, out of which 20 have been killed in grade-crossing accidents. Ninety people have died on the MTA's 22-mile L.A.-to-Long Beach Blue Line, which has had more than 821 recorded incidents between its inception in July 1990 and last July.

The above-mentioned, significantly higher-than-national average rates of accidents and fatalities along the Metrolink and MTA rail network attest to the dire state of rail safety, which is primarily caused by outdated and messy safety-related policies, procedures and practices.

One of the requisite pillars for the safety of any modern technological system's safety today is transparent, total-system-oriented accident and incident investigations, including the reporting of them and unfettered access to them by analysts or any interested party. This pillar is either broken or missing at both Metrolink and MTA.

Other serious system-related problems that have plagued our rail safety include the tragically narrow MTA Grade Crossing Policy for Light Rail Transit and the woefully incomplete MTA Grade Crossing Preliminary Hazard Analysis, which has been used in the now-under-construction Exposition light-rail project.

Villaraigosa has already offered good and specific policy recommendations for transportation safety in a report titled "After Sprawl: Action Plans for Metropolitan Los Angeles (2003)." This report, which I had the privilege of contributing to in 2002 is, according to his official mayoral biography, "a policy blueprint for addressing the issues facing many urban centers."

What he now recommends concerning the major safety improvements of the MTA and Metrolink rail network in the Southland is precisely what he suggested previously in his report. We are simply asking him to put the money where his mouth is by helping implement his vision.

Najmedin Meshkati is a professor at the University of Southern California. He teaches and conducts research on the safety of technological systems and created USC's Transportation Safety Program in 1992.

Accident Rates: Freeways vs. Light Rail

2008-09-29T09:35:00.000-07:00

As the stats show, trains pose a significantly greater safety hazard than any other vehicle on the road.

The reasons why are not difficult to understand:

MTA's light rail trains are much heavier than anything else on the road (no 225-ton motor vehicle would be allowed on the streets. The Army's Abrams Tank is comparatively 70 tons)
MTA's light rail trains can't stop on a dime
MTA's light rail trains don't have steering wheels, so they can't turn to avert or lessen impacts
MTA's light rail trains have couplings at the front of the train (see below)

MTA tries to spin this fact primarily one of two ways: deceptively comparing raw data between cars and trains, and by using stats that tell nothing about the hazards street-level light rail vehicles pose to fellow motorists, pedestrians and cyclists.

1) MTA compares raw data between cars and trains.

MTA claims that significantly more people die from car accidents every day than light rail, thus "light rail is safer." But there are millions of vehicles on the road every day, while there are only 250 Blue Line trains during a week day, and only 185 during the weekend. The amount of Blue Line trains that travel across a busy intersection in Downtown LA in an entire day (250) is equal to the number of cars in just one lane of traffic, going in just one direction, across just one intersection in just 30 mins during rush hour. Simply, there are exponentially more cars on the road, so of course there are going to be more accidents and deaths with cars, just as there is sure to be more violent deaths in the Canada (population 33,000,000) than there are in Compton (population 95,000).

How hard would you laugh at the suggestion that Compton is safer than Canada?

2) MTA uses passenger mile accident/fatality rate statistics instead of train mile accident/fatality rate statistics.

Train miles is the distance a train travels, while passenger miles is the combined distance passengers on the train have traveled.

For example, if one Blue Line carrying 50 passengers travels 10 miles it will have traveled:

10 train miles, and
500 passenger miles (50 passengers X 10 miles = 500 passenger miles)

If the train has one accident, the accident rate is 1 accident per 500 passenger miles, which looks a lot safer than 1 accident per 10 train miles.

But a 3-car train carrying 10 people will kill a pedestrian, motorist or cyclist just as dead as a train carrying 100 people.

MTA's spin tactics regarding the hazards of at-grade rail are a statement to their desperation and deception in selling these street-level projects. At Fix Expo, we believe in dealing with reality. We believe the increased hazard of light rail trains requires increased safety mitigation measures, especially grade separation in dense urban areas, which requires a capital investment that our politicians are not currently willing to make (unless you're a city like Culver City that will threaten to oppose the project legally or politically).

Instead, MTA pushes at-grade rail and forces local cities and communities to fight for upgrades, all so they can give the appearance of doing something about traffic. (In reality they're making it worse!). Simply, our politicians have falsely translated our region's desires for traffic relief into a light rail system built on the cheap and unsafely. It is a culture that does not value lives.

Blue Line accident rate from the June 2008 MTA Summary of Metro Blue Line Train/Vehicle and Train/Pedestrian Accidents (July 1990 - June 2008)
Freeway accident rate is from CalTrans, as reported by the LA Times' Steve Hymon: link

(UPDATE: We composed a flyer comparing the accident and fatality rates of roads, freeways, light rail and commuter rail.)

A Culture that Doesn't Value Life: MTA & Metrolink

2008-09-28T09:36:00.000-07:00

In the wake of the tragic Chatsworth accident, Southern California's rail transit agencies have undergone increased scrutiny (for some inexplicable reason, the rail safety oversight body for the state, the California Public Utilities Commission, has been spared).

In so many categories, Metrolink (commuter rail) and MTA (light rail) have operated systems that even in comparison to their peers are far more deadly.

A comparison of the major commuter rail systems fatality rates from 1993 (the first full year of Metrolink operation) to 2007 (the most recent full year of Metrolink operation) from the Federal Railroad Administration Office of Safety Analysis database is below:

As mentioned in a previous post, in 2003, when USA Today compiled the American Public Transit Association statistics for light rail fatalities to compose their article, Blue Line takes a troubled route, in every category the Blue Line was the deadliest light rail system in the country. Here's a graph that compares light rail system deaths from 1990 (the Blue Line's first full year of operation) to 2002:

In an op-ed published in the LA Times titled "Rail Safety's Human Error Excuse," USC Professor Najmedin Meshkati, an internationally recognized expert in transportation system safety who testified on our behalf at the CPUC Evidentiary Hearing stated:

Are we to believe, for instance, that all crossing incidents were because of negligence when the death rate is so much higher here than almost any other place in the nation?

Regarding the Blue Line, MTA and predecessor agencies have spent billions building new rail lines: the Red Line, Green Line, and Pasadena Gold Line and still they haven't gone back to add grade separation to the black-eye of rail transit safety in the country, which is slicing through South LA, Compton, Watts and Willowbrook killing people (many of them children), on a consistent basis every year. Instead, MTA proposes to replicate the most accident prone sections of the Blue Line in East LA on the Eastside extension and in South LA with the Expo Line.

In the $30-40 billion dollar measure put on the ballot by MTA there is not one penny for grade separations on the Blue Line, additional grade separations on Phase 1 of the Expo Line, or Metrolink safety upgrades. The transportation measure that is intended to set the course of the MTA for the next 30 years and there is not one penny to fix the current problems.

The reality is the culture of MTA and Metrolink, which are governed by our region's politicians, does not value lives.

Our politicians have falsely translated our region's desires for traffic relief into a commuter rail and light rail system built on the cheap and unsafely.

Delivering Quimby's Testimony to the Board of Supervisors

2008-09-23T17:54:00.000-07:00

FIX EXPO PREPARED STATEMENT BEFORE THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS

September 23, 2008

Delivered by Damien Goodmon, Coordinator

We in the Fix Expo family have closely followed the catastrophic Metrolink accident in Chatsworth with deep pain, and we can only offer our condolences to the victims and their families.

The deceased were human beings who other human beings loved and needed.

In an op-ed published last Friday in the Daily News – which you have before you - we cautioned that solely focusing on actions of the train conductor distract us from discussing other contributing factors in the accident such as the technology and board policies, indeed our politicians rail-safety cost-benefit analysis.

For that reason we applaud Supervisor Antonovich for offering the Metrolink safety motion that will be discussed at Thursday’s MTA board meeting.

We at Fix Expo have been working on the issue of rail safety on the Expo Light Rail Line under construction in our South LA community. We have identified among our many opinions that we hold equally high concern for the safety hazard that the nearly three-dozen street-level crossings pose.

We have been fighting with you all requesting additional resources in South LA for life-saving grade separation.

To date we have received no support from any member of this board regarding even the most problematic street-level crossings on the rail line in front of 3,400-student Foshay Learning Center at Western and 2,100-student Dorsey High School.

Continue reading...

We came to you with the community organizations and you refused to change course.

We came to you with the LAUSD and you refused to change course.

We came to you with the UTLA, Parent Collaborative, and Neighborhood Councils and you refused to change course.

So I come today to bring you excerpts from the CPUC hearing testimony of an international rail safety expert – Major Russ Quimby.

Russ Quimby is THE international rail safety expert with impeccable credibility – a 1974 West Point graduate. In the 22 years he was at the National Transportation Safety Board he was the Investigator-in-Charge and/or Chairman of the Mechanical, Track, or Operations Investigation groups for all severity levels of railroad or rail-transit incidents, accidents and disasters.

He is the originator or major collaborator for over 157 NTSB adopted recommendations.

If Maj. Quimby hadn’t retired from the National Transportation Safety Board in 2007, he very likely would be the Investigator-in-Charge of the Chatsworth tragedy.

Here is what he’s said regarding the Farmdale crossing just 10 feet from Dorsey HS where over 700 students walk across the tracks in the 15 mins afterschool in surges up to 108 per min:

“[T]he proposed crossing at Farmdale Avenue…poses a higher risk of a catastrophic accident.”

“By ‘catastrophic accident,’ I mean an accident involving fatalities and/or injuries to a large number of people. As proposed, the at-grade Farmdale Avenue crossing creates the notable risk that a catastrophic accident may well occur under one of several different scenarios.”

Quimby then goes on to describe one scenario where a train hits a car and the car is lodged into the holding area where hundreds of children would be standing and/or the train derails. Another involves a car being hit by a train, rupturing the tank and fuel spraying onto children standing in the holding area. The third involves a combination of the two.

In the January LA CityBeat when saying why the Farmdale crossing must be built at street level, Supervisor Yarslavsky said, “The goal is to produce a product that your critics will come back to you and say, ‘You were right, we were wrong.'”

We fight at Fix Expo because Supervisors we don’t want to hear you say to us in 1 year, 5 years or 10 years after many have died, “The rail safety experts and community were right, we were wrong.”

We implore you Supervisors to Fix the Expo Line. Prevent tragedies. Save lives.

Our Daily News Op-Ed on the Metrolink Tragedy & the Systemic Rail Safety Problem

2008-09-19T10:44:00.000-07:00

Our following op-ed appeared in the September 19 Daily News: Blaming Individuals Misses The Big Picture

Despite the fact that Metrolink operates one of the deadliest commuter rail systems in America and MTA operates the deadliest light-rail system in America, our region's rail transportation agencies continue to offer the lone-culprit theory for nearly every accident. This time it's the train conductor; in the past it's been the hundreds of deceased/injured motorist and pedestrian.

The blame the victim strategy distracts the public from the rail safety cost-benefit analysis that our transportation agencies continue to implement with impunity. It distracts the public from the manner in which our politicians have erroneously translated our requests for traffic relief into an unsafe commuter rail and light-rail system built on the cheap.

It may very well be true that in many rail accidents the transportation system's user bears some responsibility. But with accident rates so much higher than their peers, it does not logically follow that the policies and the designs of our rail transport systems are not a factor.
[....]
Blaming the victim or implying that accidents can't be prevented takes the spotlight off inadequate policies, unsafe designs and system failures.

Continue reading for the full op-ed:

Blaming Individuals Misses The Big Picture
LA Daily News
September 19, 2008
By Damien Goodmon

In the rush to judgment in the tragic Chatsworth accident, the focus has been on the actions of the train ~~engineer~~ conductor, a tactic that is beneficial to our transportation agencies.

As a rail safety advocate who for the past two years has been involved in an intense political and legal battle regarding rail safety of a proposed light rail line in my South L.A. community, that line of reasoning is all too familiar.

Despite the fact that Metrolink operates one of the deadliest commuter rail systems in America and MTA operates the deadliest light-rail system in America, our region's rail transportation agencies continue to offer the lone-culprit theory for nearly every accident. This time it's the train conductor; in the past it's been the hundreds of deceased/injured motorist and pedestrian.

The blame the victim strategy distracts the public from the rail safety cost-benefit analysis that our transportation agencies continue to implement with impunity. It distracts the public from the manner in which our politicians have erroneously translated our requests for traffic relief into an unsafe commuter rail and light-rail system built on the cheap.

It may very well be true that in many rail accidents the transportation system's user bears some responsibility. But with accident rates so much higher than their peers, it does not logically follow that the policies and the designs of our rail transport systems are not a factor.

For the past two years the South L.A. group, the Citizens' Campaign to Fix the Expo Rail Line, has been on the front lines of a battle with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority about rail safety. Our goal has been to secure investment in safety enhancements on the Expo Light Rail Line, which is currently under construction.

We are concerned that the line will have the same tragic consequences as MTA's Blue Line, which at 90 deaths and 821 accidents is the deadliest light-rail line in the U.S.

In our legal proceeding before the California Public Utilities Commission, the state's rail safety regulatory body, we've used the MTA and CPUC's own reports, statistics, internal memos and e-mails to explain why the street-level Expo Line crossings will be deadly. World and nationally renowned authorities on transportation system failures, human error, rail accident causation, and car accident causation have testified on our behalf.

At each turn our broad coalition and our rail safety experts have been dismissed by the politicians on the MTA and subsidiary boards citing as their reasons: The recommendations and requests are cost-prohibitive, would cause delay, or "would violate their policy."

Blaming the victim or implying that accidents can't be prevented takes the spotlight off inadequate policies, unsafe designs and system failures. Whether it's implementing more active alert systems, building new tracks so freight trains don't operate on the same track as Metrolink, or adopting as a standard that light-rail trains be built elevated or underground in densely populated congested urban spaces, our transportation agencies can be doing so much more than they are right now.

We cannot allow the Chatsworth accident report to be shelved, the investigation mustn't be limited to just this one accident, and we cannot accept as an explanation that the ~~engineer~~ conductor, was only to blame. An independent systemwide top-to-bottom critique that evaluates every policy and budget decision with the goal of creating a series of recommendations is the very least we must do to honor the memories of the victims of last week's accident and the countless many who have been killed on our region's tracks before them.

Give Blood for Metrolink Crash Victims

2008-09-15T09:03:00.000-07:00

By now most have heard of Friday's terrible tragedy that occurred in Chatsworth, near the Ventura County border, as a Metrolink and freight train collided head-on. At last count 25 individuals have passed, over 60 remain in critical condition, and dozens more are wounded.

The large number of injuries has resulted in a call for healthy blood donors. For those that can give blood, please contact the UCLA Blood and Platelet Center, which is open Monday through Friday. To make an appointment call (310) 794 - 7217 extension 2.

Please keep the families and the victims in your prayers.

Damien Goodmon
Coordinator
Citizens' Campaign to Fix the Expo Rail Line

Why do we fight for grade separation?

2008-08-27T13:47:00.000-07:00

Recently Russ Quimby an internationally recognized expert in rail accident causation and investigations submitted testimony in the CPUC hearing regarding the two crossings closest to our South LA community schools: Farmdale Ave (10 feet from Dorsey HS) and Western Ave (50 feet from Foshay Learning Center).

Here's an excerpt of his professional evaluation of the Farmdale Avenue crossing:

As proposed, the Farmdale Avenue crossing creates a high risk that students will be injured and killed because the proposed safety mitigation measures essentially put the burden on students to maintain their own safety. The proposed crossing also creates a higher risk of a catastrophic accident. [....]

By "catastrophic accident," I mean an accident involving fatalities and/or injuries to a large number of people. As proposed, the at-grade Farmdale Avenue crossing creates the notable risk that a catastrophic accident may well occur under one of several different scenarios. For example:

First, that a train will collide with a vehicle with sufficient force to either derail the train into and/or push the vehicle into the proposed "holding pens" where several hundred students are trapped inside, killing or seriously injuring scores of students in a single accident.

Second, that a train will collide with a vehicle (particularly a truck or bus) rupturing and igniting a fuel tank which would engulf students in the holding pen in flaming diesel or gasoline.

Third, a combination of the above two scenarios where the students are crushed and burned simultaneously by vehicles and/or a derailed train.

You don't have to look far to see that just these types of accidents (car gets hit by train and train derails, and/or catches on fire). In fact, you can look to the MTA's very own Gold Line, which the Expo Authority calls "safe":

When you think of the word "SAFE" is this the image that comes to mind?

That crumbled piece of metal that looks like a big potato chip bag is a former SUV that upon impact with the train caught on fire.

Video from the accident is below.

Led by the same project managers who told the communities around the Gold Line that it would be safe and that accidents like that would never happen, the MTA now tells us a train that crosses major streets like Crenshaw, Western, Normandie and Vermont without even basic crossing gates, and passes 10 feet of Dorsey HS is "safe."

We're being told this by the MTA - an agency that operates the Blue Line, which at over 821 accidents and 90 deaths is the deadliest light rail line in the country.

Today the number is up to 90 people DEAD and over 821 accidents.

Does that sounds safe to you?

Here's the chaos at Farmdale/Exposition, where every day after school 700 kids in 15 mins (up to 108 per min) flood the tracks. There's nothing like it anywhere on MTA light rail system:

MTA plan for this crossing is not grade separation, but instead, what they originally called a "holding pen," akin to that for a penal institution or for cattle:

The "protection" MTA proposes for OUR South LA kids at Dorsey HS every day for the next 100 years is a holding pen.

We fight because we don't want to prove Russ Quimby right. We don't want that holding pen - we won't accept an at-grade crossing here.

Dozens of children have already been killed on the tracks of MTA's trains. Children that successfully crossed the tracks thousands of times, but just one day at one time was caught in a bad circumstance. They are gone now.

Tell the MTA, PUC and our elected officials to FIX EXPO, by giving South LA equal investment, equal treatment and the same safety as the end of Phase 1 from La Cienega to Robertson. We don't want to have to bury any more children because of MTA's unsafe street-level crossings.

Major Battle Victory at the PUC

2008-08-11T19:25:00.000-07:00

(As covered in CityWatchLA)

At the California Public Utilities Commission Hearing Monday on the Expo Line crossings by Dorsey High School and Foshay Learning Center, the assigned Judge Kenneth Koss issued the following statement as part of his ruling:

"With the submission of Expo's information it appears that a grade separation at Farmdale is in fact practicable."

This means that the street-level application with the holding pen is off the table.

The only options are:
a) underpass
b) overpass
c) street closure with a pedestrian bridge

This a major victory for the Dorsey High School family - for the future children of Dorsey HS.

Here’s some of the leadup to the hearing.

The Expo Authority since February has been conducting a study on alternatives to the street-level railroad crossing at Farmdale right by Dorsey HS.

Since April, both our attorneys and the LAUSD lawyers have been requesting the study. Expo has refused to supply it, including during discovery. They were ordered to supply it by the Judge and still they have not. Yet, in June, Expo produced testimony stating that this study showed that closing off Farmdale and building a pedestrian bridge was not possible because it would have adverse traffic impacts on the adjacent crossing of Buckingham that could not be mitigated and would not comply with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Again we requested the study and they failed to supply it.

The LAUSD and our attorneys supplied our testimony in response to Expo's testimony August 6 and July 30 respectively.

Our lawyers filed a request for a continuance on August 7 because of the failure of Expo to supply the document, along with motions to eliminate from the record any reference of Expo's witnesses to the study since Expo refused to supply it. The same day, the Judge denied the request for the continuance and stated the other matters would be addressed on Monday.

On night of August 8, at 7:30 pm, Expo sent amended testimony COMPLETELY REVERSING their position that they could not close Farmdale and on Saturday night they submitted another 75 pg document showing how it would legally comply with CEQA.

The LAUSD is quite clear in their statement:

"We can reasonably infer from such changes in Expo's Friday night revised testimony that the 'draft' traffic study found adverse impacts that would have to mitigated, so Expo commissioned another study to reach a conclusion more to its liking."

Accordingly, the LAUSD has requested they be supplied all of Expo's draft studies to determine the extent of the manipulation by the Expo Authority:

"These studies will provide a window into Expo's apparent manipulation of technical studies to serve its litigation interests in this case. To the extent is shows that Expo has suppressed studies with conclusions not to its liking and has commissioned other studies that later the assumptions or methodologies to arrive at different conclusions, that practice is highly relevant to the weight this Commission should give to Expo's witnesses' testimony. To ignore such practices and to accept the project proponent's technical assertions at face value would make a mockery of this hearing."

Judge Koss answered the question of MTA motives with his Monday decision.

Thank You for Coming Out to a Great Protest!

2008-08-10T01:09:00.000-07:00

Thank you to the hundreds who showed up at Foshay and Dorsey yesterday to rally for safety and grade separation on the Expo Line. A special thanks to the brave and able many who marched the 2.5 miles in between, and those who spent their Friday night before the protest making our great signs.

It is Time to Take Our Fight to the Streets!

2008-08-07T18:49:00.000-07:00

As reported by Betty Pleasant in this week's The Wave, this Saturday, August 9th the LAUSD and United Teachers Los Angeles will lead a protest that we're supporting opposing the unsafe street-level railroad crossings near our community's schools.

The goal is to send a message to the MTA and Public Utilities Commission that we do not support the MTA's proposed Expo Line Phase 1 design that forces no child west of La Cienega to walk across the tracks, but forces thousands of South LA children to walk across the tracks every day for the next 100 years (link and pdf). Show up to stand up for our community and children's safety!

The schedule for Saturday's activities is as follows:

9 am - 10 am:

Assembly at Foshay Learning Center (Western/Exposition)

10 am - 11 am:

Solemn walk, bike, drive, jog to from Foshay to Dorsey HS (Farmdale/Exposition)

11 am - Noon:

Assembly at Dorsey High School to plan next steps

(Download the LAUSD's bilingual flyer)

WE DID IT! PUC Evidentiary Hearing Moved to Los Angeles

2008-08-07T18:41:00.000-07:00

An Important Battle Victory in a Our Struggle

As reported in the LA Watts Times last week, we won an important battle in our struggle, as the Public Utilities Commission ("PUC") moved the location of the evidentiary hearing from San Francisco down to Los Angeles. The PUC is one regulatory body that can prevent MTA from building the trains at street level.

Holding the hearing is San Francisco would have been a logistical nightmare for us and prevented several of our witnesses from testifying. But because of YOU and YOUR emails and letters, and YOUR ACTION through your presence and statements of concern at the July 2nd PUC Workshop at Foshay we were victorious.

Special thanks go to State Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas, who promptly responded to the concerns of the community by sending the first letter to the PUC requesting the hearing be moved to Los Angeles. Thanks also go to Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, Assembly Member Mike Davis and even Council Member Herb Wesson for writting letters and contacting the PUC.

The hearings will be held daily from August 11 to August 15 beginning at 10 am and ending at 5 pm at the PUC's Downtown Los Angeles hearing room:

320 W. 4th Street Suite 500

Los Angeles, CA 90008

Street-Level Debacle - LA Business Journal Op-Ed

2008-07-28T22:56:00.000-07:00

The following op-ed appeared in the July 28, 2008 edition of LA Business Journal, regarding the Mayor's proposed sales-tax increase for transportation.

Shared tax burdens should result in shared benefits. Thus, if the MTA and mayor hear the concerns of South L.A. and invest in life-saving and community-preserving grade separations, particularly near our schools, we’re prepared to support his sales tax hike. But expecting South L.A. taxpayers to accept the street-level Expo Line design, while forcing us to pay for a subway under Hancock Park, Beverly Hills and Century City, is simply adding insult to injury and furthering MTA’s discriminatory tactics.

The entire article is below:

Street-Level Debacle

MTA expects South L.A. to bear the burden of proposed Expo Line and its dangerous above-ground trains.
By DAMIEN GOODMON

In his effort to build the Wilshire subway western extension to Santa Monica, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who chairs the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board, has proposed increasing the regressive sales tax in the face of an economic downturn that is hitting the vulnerable taxpayers, consumers and businesses of South Los Angeles the hardest.

The mayor’s request for sacrifice from his South L.A. constituents for the Subway to the Sea is audacious given his unresponsiveness to the large South L.A. coalition requesting equal investment and equal treatment from the MTA regarding Phase 1 of the Expo Light Rail Line.

As it traverses from downtown L.A. to Culver City, the 8.5-mile Expo Line is proposed to slice across nearly all intersections in South L.A. at street level 240 times a day. In addition to the adverse traffic impacts, noise pollution and other environmental concerns, the street-level design poses a significant safety hazard, with 225-ton trains planned to operate at speeds up to 35 and 55 miles an hour. At Vermont, Normandie, Western and Crenshaw, which abut large urban schools, parks and places of worship, crossing gates aren’t even proposed. Twenty one of the 27 proposed street-level crossings have no gates.

This design has proved to be unsafe, evidenced by the accident record of the MTA’s Blue Line, which en route to Long Beach from downtown L.A. carves through the communities of South L.A., Watts, Willowbrook and Compton, and is the deadliest light rail line in the country with 818 accidents and 90 deaths.

The Expo Line’s close proximity to more than a dozen schools, in particular the 2,100-student Dorsey High School (which would be 10 feet from the tracks) and 3,500-student Foshay Learning Center (50 feet from the tracks), has prompted resolutions opposing all or portions of the street-level design from United Teachers Los Angeles and LAUSD Parent Collaborative, and legal action by the LAUSD Board of Education. All are concerned that children will be lost, such as 14-year-old Lavert Baker Jr., who never made it home from school last year because he was killed by a Blue Line train that was carrying his sister. Lavert is one of more than a dozen youths and young adults who have met similar unfortunate fates on the tracks of MTA trains.

Throughout the planning stages of the Expo Line, all parents, teachers and residents expressed concerns about the safety and environmental impacts of the street-level design – in South L.A. and in Culver City. The Culver City City Council heard the voices of its constituents and responded by passing motions prohibiting the street-level crossings the MTA had originally planned for their city.

Recognizing the power of a municipality, MTA bowed to Culver City’s demands, adding very costly overpasses, realigning National Boulevard and shifting a station platform so that Phase 1 of the Expo Line would not have any street-level crossings west of La Cienega Boulevard. The result is a 100-year project that west of La Cienega requires no child to walk across tracks, gridlocks no traffic, delays no emergency services, and inflicts no noise pollution, while imposing all of these burdens and more east of La Cienega in South L.A.

This discrepancy is perhaps best illustrated by the vast disparity in the amount of tax dollars MTA is spending for the one mile of the Expo Line from La Cienega to the Robertson Boulevard terminus in Culver City ($185 million for the one mile) compared with the 4.5 miles in South L.A. (just $31 million per mile, for a total of $140 million).

South L.A. paid its taxes for Phase 1 of the Expo Line: $35 million from the city of L.A. versus just $4 million from Culver City. Yet, we’re receiving a substantially lower return, and expected to bear greater hardship, including the ultimate calamities – the loss of life and limb.

Shared tax burdens should result in shared benefits. Thus, if the MTA and mayor hear the concerns of South L.A. and invest in life-saving and community-preserving grade separations, particularly near our schools, we’re prepared to support his sales tax hike. But expecting South L.A. taxpayers to accept the street-level Expo Line design, while forcing us to pay for a subway under Hancock Park, Beverly Hills and Century City, is simply adding insult to injury and furthering MTA’s discriminatory tactics.

Political Interference in the CPUC Judicial Process

2008-06-29T20:08:00.000-07:00

While the South LA community was fighting to literally protect children’s lives, our own elected representative, Council Member Bernard Parks, along with Santa Monica politician State Senator Sheila Kuehl, were applying pressure on judicial officers of a State oversight agency to impede our efforts in court.

The South LA community, teachers, parents, and child advocates have long expressed reservations about the unsafe street-level design of the Expo Light Rail Line, particularly around our schools like Dorsey HS (10 feet of the railroad crossing) and Foshay Learning Center (50 feet of the crossing). The state oversight agency for the safety of all rail crossings is the California Public Utilities Commission (“CPUC”). All transportation agencies attempting to build and operate a rail line across any street in California must submit applications and receive approval from the CPUC. The CPUC can either approve or reject a crossing application on the grounds of safety, and has rejected countless railroad crossing applications in the past.

One of the lead groups of the Fix Expo Campaign, Expo Communities United (“ECU”), exercised its legal rights by protesting all of the unsafe street-level Expo Line applications, and requesting a hearing to discuss the safety hazards and needed safety upgrades. In the process ECU delayed what would have been a 60-day rubberstamp process.

The ECU research team amassed an extensive record proving that the street-level crossings were not safe. Among the evidence submitted were:
a) internal memos expressing reservations about the safety of the crossings by the staff of numerous public agencies, namely the PUC’s own engineers & former LADOT General Manager Gloria Jeff; and
b) a convincing showing that the bulk of the Expo Line design was an exact replica of the deadliest & most accident-prone light rail line in America, the MTA’s Blue Line, & would operate in more complex environments, meaning even more accidents & deaths could be expected. Surely an opportunity to argue the case would be provided, further lengthening the application process.

Unexpectedly, on August 14, 2007 Commissioner Timothy Simon, one of five governor-appointed representatives to the CPUC, and the assigned Commissioner to the Expo Line case issued an “Open Letter to Lawmakers Regarding the Expo Line Proceeding," stating that he was receiving pressure from local legislators to expedite the case. In the letter Simon stated that he considered approving the applications and expediting the case “of the highest priority.” Commissioner Simon specifically said, “approving these applications” as though a determination had already been made, even though ECU and LAUSD had yet to present their cases to the CPUC.

In an email on November 19, 2007 (pdf), Commissioner Simon’s Chief of Staff identified the legislators who were contacting him with concerns about the “time consuming process of approving these applications” that led to the Open Letter:

STATE SENATOR SHEILA KUEHL (Santa Monica)
COUNCIL MEMBER BERNARD PARKS, who represents the area where the Expo Line passes within a stone’s throw of sensitive sites like Foshay Learning Center, and operates without even basic crossing gates in a design that is exactly like one of the most accident-prone sections of the Blue Line.

When the letter was issued, Simon had not yet been confirmed to the Commission by the California State Senate, in which Sen. Kuehl is a very influential member. Simon’s eventual confirmation hearing, which occurred months later, was filled with controversy about his ethics (PUC Member’s Donation Request Raises Questions – LA Times). At the time Kuehl was also pushing legislation to remove the jurisdiction of rail crossing safety from the CPUC.

And we have confirmed that Bernard Parks has been accepting donations for his campaign for County Supervisor from MTA and Expo Line contractors in violation of California law.

Download the flyer of the above text click here

Fix Expo Op-Ed on Mayor’s Transportation Sales Tax: Racism & Reverse Robin Hood

2008-06-28T18:03:00.000-07:00

Our op-ed on the Mayor's proposed 1/2-cent sales tax increase for transportation appeared in CityWatch:

"The discrepancies on the Expo Line need to fixed and this institutional discrimination cannot be tolerated. If the MTA and Mayor Villaraigosa go back and find the additional money for grade separations for South LA like they did for Culver City, or simply scale back the Expo Line and only build the portions they can afford to build correctly, we're prepared to support his sales tax measure.

"But increasing the tax burden on the taxpayers of South LA, who are being hit the hardest by the economic downturn, for rail projects that primarily benefit other areas, like a subway under Hancock Park, Beverly Hills and Century City, or threaten our children's lives and harm our community, like the street-level design of the Expo Line is simply pouring salt on our wounds and furthering MTA's discriminatory tactics."

Click here to read the entire article:

Discussion of a possible ½-cent sales tax increase for transportation that would be forced upon all residents of Los Angeles County has been dominated by Westsiders and the Valley, with those regions demanding something in return for their support. What about the South Los Angeles region, which is among the country's most economically challenged and whose residents and businesses the tax hike would impose the greatest hardship?

A growing South Los Angeles coalition of neighborhood councils and community organizations, has come together to demand equal investment and equal treatment from the MTA regarding Phase 1 of the Expo Light Rail Line from Downtown LA to Culver City. En route to Culver City the MTA's train is planned to cut through South LA residential community across the major intersections of Vermont, Normandie, Western and Crenshaw at street-level.

In addition to the adverse traffic impacts of the street-running design, the lack of even basic crossing gates and grade separation (overpasses and underpasses) at almost all of the intersections, ensures that South LA will endure countless accidents and deaths from the Expo Line, as evident by the MTA's own Blue Line. The Blue Line similarly slices through the black and brown communities of South LA, Watts, Willowbrook and Compton en route to Long Beach from Downtown LA, and is America's deadliest light rail line.

The close proximity of over a dozen schools and parks, including several that are within a stones throw of the Expo Line, is especially worrisome, and has prompted opposition to all or portions of the street-level design from UTLA, LAUSD Parent Collaborative, and the LAUSD Board of Education.

In the early planning stages of the Expo Line, all residents, teachers and parents expressed safety and environmental impact concerns - in South LA and in Culver City. The Culver City Council responded by passing a motion prohibiting any street-level crossings in their city and threatening to tie the project up in court if the MTA tried to push through their original design that called for all street-level crossings in their city.

MTA eventually complied with Culver City's demand, adding very costly overpasses and realigning National Blvd so the Expo Line would not cross any street at street-level, thereby imposing no safety risk, no traffic impact and eliminating other adverse impacts. These upgrades came at a price, which is best illustrated by the vast discrepancy in the amount of tax dollars MTA is spending for the one mile of the Expo Line from La Cienega to the Robertson terminus in Culver City ($185 million) vs. the 4.5 miles in South LA (just $140 million).

The MTA's failure to apply the same standards across all residential communities from Downtown LA to Culver City has resulted in an 8.5-mile light rail line that places all of the safety hazards and adverse environmental impacts on low-income and/or minority communities, and none on the majority Caucasian middle to upper class community west of La Cienega. The legal term for this is environmental racism.

We in South LA paid our taxes, but are not receiving the same safety enhancements, traffic mitigation or amount per mile as the community west of La Cienega. In fact, the City of Los Angeles is contributing $35 million to the construction of the line, compared to just $4 million from the City of Culver City.

South LA is being forced to assume a much higher risk, and be imposed a much greater burden for a project that's primary purpose is to benefit the areas to our east and west. That's not right.

Children in South LA shouldn't be forced to walk across Expo Line tracks, if they won't be in Culver City.

Residential communities, traffic and emergency response times shouldn't be disrupted in South LA, if they won't be in Culver City.

The discrepancies on the Expo Line need to fixed and this institutional discrimination cannot be tolerated. If the MTA and Mayor Villaraigosa go back and find the additional money for grade separations for South LA like they did for Culver City, or simply scale back the Expo Line and only build the portions they can afford to build correctly, we're prepared to support his sales tax measure.

But increasing the tax burden on the taxpayers of South LA, who are being hit the hardest by the economic downturn, for rail projects that primarily benefit other areas, like a subway under Hancock Park, Beverly Hills and Century City, or threaten our children's lives and harm our community, like the street-level design of the Expo Line is simply pouring salt on our wounds and furthering MTA's discriminatory tactics.

Recent Press

2008-06-28T17:55:00.000-07:00

Several links to recent press on this issue have been added to the "Press" section on the right hand column.

Our May 22 community meeting at Dorsey HS was reported on the front page of the LA Watts Times: City's Black Elected Officials Missing in Action as Residents Fight to Fix Expo Rail Line

The history of Yvonne Burke's involvement with the Blue Line and Expo Line was covered in LA Weekly's Yvonne Burke's Crumbling Kingdom

A brief blurb about Gloria Molina's comments regarding the equity in transit funding at Thursday's MTA Board Meeting appeared in the LB Press-Telegram:

Molina, in particular, expressed her displeasure during the MTA meeting that the tax would fund a subway to the Westside, while East Los Angeles and South Los Angeles have been allocated cheaper above-ground light rail systems.

"When it goes to the west side of town, they get a subway. When it went to the east side of town, you had to get light rail above ground," Molina said, calling light rail a "second-class system." Molina later retracted that statement, but maintained that above-ground rail was less convenient and noisier than subways.

"We were ripped off of our subway," she said

This excerpt from our Public Records Act request of Bernard Parks appeared in Betty Pleasant's June 26th Soulvine:

THESE ARE PIT BULLS! — Expo Communities United, the group organized to deal with the Exposition Metro Line scheduled to cut a swath through residential neighborhoods from downtown L.A. to Culver City, is a tenacious bunch. In its ongoing fight for safety amendments to the Expo Line’s plans, the group has invoked the California Public Records Act and requested of Councilman Bernard Parks that he, personally, provide the organization a whole lot of documents pertaining to the Expo Line’s construction. The June 6 CPRA request was signed by Expo Communities United leaders Damien Goodmon, Clint Simmons and Carol Tucker, and pursuant to the law, Parks has until the close of business tomorrow to comply — or else.

This excerpt from our complaint filed with the Fair Political Practices Commission regarding Parks' illegal campaign donations from MTA contractors appeared in Betty Pleasant's May 29th Soulvine:

The Citizens’ Campaign to Fix the Expo Line filed a complaint, along with exhibits, Tuesday with the Fair Political Practices Commission alleging that Councilman Bernard Parks, appointee to the MTA and the Expo Authority boards of directors, is bankrolling his campaign for the 2nd Supervisorial District with contributions from MTA contractors in violation of three state conflict of interest laws. On Wednesday, the group filed a complaint on the same allegations with the state Attorney General’s Office.

A fight over the Expo Line by Steve Hymon, appeared on the LA Times Bottleneck blog

The Environmental Justice Fact Sheet

2008-06-25T15:38:00.000-07:00

We've uploaded our Environmental Justice Fact Sheet to the web (link to pdf). You can access the document, along with all of our other flyers and fact sheets on the right hand corner under "Fact Sheets & Forms"

UTLA Stands Up for Our Children & Schools

2008-06-20T07:51:00.000-07:00

On January 16, 2008, the United Teachers Los Angeles House of Representatives stood up for the safety of children and the preservation of learning environments through HOR 11-7-07 Special Order #13:

Moved by Elaine LeBoeuf, seconded by Susie Chow that UTLA oppose the construction of the Expo Rail Line (light rail) as it is proposed. At least 5 schools are less than 100 feet from the at-grade (street level) rail which will be an extreme hazard to students, teachers and the general public. UTLA recommends that MTA build the train totally grade separated as it will be in Culver City and underground (as it will be at Figueroa Street at USC) in this high density area. Noise pollution is also a concern. Take it back to [the] Commission for a safer proposal.
Rationale: We are concerned about the safety and welfare of [the] general public (dogs and cats, too) in this densely populated area. Students will have difficulty concentrating with bells and whistles every 2 1/2 minutes. Sound walls can't be constructed to mitigate this circumstance.

Special thanks go to UTLA Dorsey HS Chapter Chair Noah Lippe-Klein, and UTLA Community Relations Chair Elaine LeBoeuf.

The motion can be downloaded by clicking here.

LAUSD Board of Education Stands Up for Children's Safety & Learning Environments

2008-06-19T17:46:00.000-07:00

(Schools within 1/3rd of a mile of the Expo Line)

At their November 13, 2007 meeting, the LAUSD Board unanimously adopted the Keeping Kids Safe Resolution presented by Board Members Marguerite LaMotte & Julie Korenstein supporting the position of the community requesting Expo Line grade separation at Farmdale (Dorsey HS), opposing Expo Line at-grade crossings in close proximity to school sites that aren't sufficiently mitigated, and directing their legal department to fight to such ends.

Continue reading to view the full text of the resolution:

Whereas, The Metropolitan Transportation Authority's (MTA) Expo Light Rail Line is proposed to operate primarily at-grade;

Whereas, According to the Summary of Metro Blue Line Train/Vehicle and Train Pedestrian Accident Report (7/90-6/07), in 17 years of operating primarily at-grade, the Metro Blue Line has become the nation's deadliest and most accident-prone light rail line in the country, and statistics indicate 88 deaths and 795 accidents have occurred in urban areas with lower vehicular and pedestrian traffic volume and residential density than the Expo Rail Line corridor;

Whereas, The proposed Expo Line's median-running and side-street running designs from the intersection of 11th and Flower Streets to Arlington Avenue and Exposition Boulevard is the exact replica of the most accident prone portion of the MTA's Blue Line;

Whereas, The Los Angeles Unified School District Distance Criteria for School Siting precludes schools from being built within 128 feet of an active rail line; unless the risk is found to be less than significant;

Whereas, The property line of Susan Miller Dorsey High School, with a student population of over 1,600, is within 20 feet of the proposed at-grade Expo Rail Line crossings;

Whereas, The property line of Foshay Learning Center, with a student population of over 3,400, is within 50 feet of the proposed at-grade Expo Rail Line crossings;

Whereas, The Expo Line is proposed to operate within walking distance of Foshay Learning Center, Theodore T. Alexander Science Center Elementary School, Weemes Elementary, Baldwin Hills Elementary School, and Dorsey High School;

Whereas, On a daily basis thousands of students walk in close proximity and cross the Expo Line tracks, which encompasses several safe passage school routes;

Whereas, To ensure a quality learning environment, interior and exterior noise levels must maintain acoustical standards not exceeding American National Standards Institute guidelines (ANSI S.12.60-2002) and criteria established by the Collaborative for High Performing Schools (CHPS);

Whereas, The Expo Rail Line trains will blow its horns on approach and through each at-grade crossing near District schools as frequently as 30 times per hour;

Whereas, Horn blowing would not be required if the Expo Line is constructed above or below grade, and noise impacts would be significantly reduced;

Whereas, The increased traffic and vehicles idling near the school sites will have an adverse effect on the health of school occupants;

Whereas, MTA is making the investment to eliminate all at-grade crossings on the Expo Rail Line in the City of Culver City; and

Whereas, MTA is making the investment to construct an underpass at Figueroa Street and Exposition Boulevard adjacent to the University of Southern California; now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the Los Angeles Unified School District supports the position of the community, which opposes the at-grade design of the Expo Light Rail Line at the Farmdale crossing;

Resolved further, That the District is opposed to the operation of any at-grade design of the Expo Light Rail Line along streets in close proximity to school sites, unless it is demonstrated that alternative mitigation measures will eliminate all safety hazards; and be it finally

Resolved, That the Governing Board of the Los Angeles Unified School District directs the Superintendent to exhaust all legal options in working with the MTA to eliminate all at-grade crossings along the proposed Expo Line that present a significant risk to pedestrian safety.

The Resolution can be downloaded in pdf format by clicking here.

The Neighborhood Councils Stand Up for South LA Safety, Community & Justice

2008-06-18T08:07:00.000-07:00

Motions have been passed by the directly impacted South LA Neighborhood Councils opposing the Expo Line's current street level design through South LA and supporting the community's alternative for a below grade alignment (underground or trench) from the Exposition Park trench at Figueroa to La Brea (4 of the 8.6 miles of the Expo Line).

Empowerment Congress West Area Neighborhood Development Council, which represents the Baldwin Hills, Baldwin Village, Baldwin Vista, Crenshaw Manor, Leimert Park and Village Green communities passed their motion on December 18, 2007: pdf

Empowerment Congress North Area Neighborhood Development Council, which represents the University Park and Jefferson Park communities passed their motion on December 6, 2007: pdf

West Adams Neighborhood Council, which represents the area around Dorsey HS passed their motion in the summer of 2007: pdf

UPDATE: United Neighborhoods Neighborhood Council, passed a resolution on September 4, 2008, meaning all four of the directly adjacent neighborhood councils in South LA have passed similar resolutions opposing street-level crossings in South LA and supporting grade separation.

The full text of the ECWANDC Resolution is available by continuing to read...

Empowerment Congress West Area Neighborhood Development Council

Expo Line Project Resolution & Recommendations
December 18, 2007
Whereas, there would be a substantial environmental impact to the Empowerment Congress West Area Neighborhood Development Council area from the currently proposed light rail Expo Line project, which will operate all hours of the day and will impact the community frequently and consistently for generations;

Whereas, at-grade crossings proposed at Arlington Avenue, 7th Avenue, 11th Avenue, Crenshaw Blvd, Buckingham Road and Farmdale Avenue pose a grave safety risk to motorists and pedestrians, particularly the elderly, disabled and children;

Whereas, much of the Expo Line design is similar to Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Blue Line, which to date has killed 89 people and been involved in over 798 accidents, making it the deadliest and most accident-prone light rail line in the country;

Whereas, the Metropolitan Transit Authority's 1998 Booz-Allen, Hamilton study identified the major cause of the Blue Line accidents as the high ridership of the line, large vehicular and pedestrian traffic around station locations, diverse socio-economic population, high residential density and slow traffic speeds of vehicles, conditions which are all similar or greater in intensity on the Expo Line corridor;

Whereas, train crossings are predicted in upwards of every 30 times per hour per intersection;

Whereas, the property lines of several schools, parks and places of worship are within 50 feet of the Expo Line, and a large youth population is within walking distance of the tracks;

Whereas, traffic counts at the intersection of Washington Blvd & National Blvd in the city of Culver City, state of California, and at the intersection of Jefferson Blvd & National Blvd in West Los Angeles, state of California where grade separations are proposed are lower than traffic counts at Crenshaw & Exposition where no grade separation is proposed;

Where as, train horns, bells, whistles, track switches, crossing gates, overpasses, sound walls, street closures and crossing gates cause noise, blight, division, and traffic congestion, and obstruct easy access to emergency services and parks;
Whereas, crossing gates at 7th Avenue & Exposition will severely impact emergency response times of Fire Station 34;

Whereas, crossing gates at Farmdale Avenue & Exposition will severely impact emergency response times of Fire Station 94;

Whereas, traffic circulation will be severely disrupted with the closure of 2nd Avenue and 3rd Avenue;

Whereas, the closure of Rancho Cienega park access will nearly completely eliminate access from the northside of the tracks;

Whereas, the closure of Baldwin Hills park access will completely eliminate access from the northside of the tracks;

Whereas, short-term budgeting and decision-making has not made a full accounting of the life cycle costs of at-grade Expo Line crossings, which include negative externalities such as pollution mitigation for idling queued vehicles, the cost for increased highway storage capacity to accommodate traffic backed up by the train, the loss of productivity and delays due to crossing gates and train-auto and train-pedestrian accidents, the cost of lawsuits due to loss of life and limb, the cost of traffic gate and signal maintenance, the loss of ridership due to slow trains speeds because of auto traffic congestion, reduced emergency service access, and spillover congestion on the rest of the roadway system;

Whereas, a below grade Expo Line on Exposition Blvd through the Empowerment Congress West Area Neighborhood Development Council and other South LA communities eliminates these and other adverse environmental impacts;

Whereas, a below grade Expo Line on Exposition Blvd through the Empowerment Congress West Area Neighborhood Development Council area produces a higher return on the large taxpayer investment through increased ridership, reduced travel times, reduced annual operating cost, and increased capacity for spurs that can serve several parts of our region;

Whereas, the political leadership of South Los Angeles has the capacity, standing and has significant influence (federal, state and local) on the relevant committees, boards, and commissions to represent and meet the needs of the community;

Be it resolved, that the Empowerment Congress West Area Neighborhood Development Council opposes the currently proposed design of the light rail Expo Line;

Be it resolved, that the Empowerment Congress West Area Neighborhood Development Council supports the community's efforts to grade separate all currently proposed at-grade crossings on the Expo Line;

Be it resolved, that the Empowerment Congress West Area Neighborhood Development Council demands that the political leadership of South Los Angeles fulfill the needs of its citizens for a safe and efficient grade separated Expo Line that maintains community cohesion;

Be it further resolved; that the Empowerment Congress West Area Neighborhood Development Council supports beginning to build the Expo Line below grade from the Figueroa trench through South Los Angeles as far as the existing budget will allow, while simultaneously supporting increased investment through annual government budgets and new resources like State Proposition 1B and State Proposition 1C to complete phase 1 to Culver City.

LAUSD Parent Collaborative Stands Up for Children's Safety & Learning Environments

2008-06-17T19:07:00.000-07:00

The LAUSD Parent Collaborative sent their letter in opposition to the primarily at-grade alignment of the Expo Line to the CPUC in November of 2006.

Continue reading for the full text of the letter:

Mr. Varoujan Jinbachian
California Public Utilities Commission
Rail Crossing Engineering Section
320 West 4th Street, Suite 500
Los Angeles, California 90013

Dear Mr. Jinbachian:

This letter will have reference to the proposed light rail project poised to be located within fifty to seventy feet of a number of schools in the LAUSD.

As you are aware, Dorsey High School is located within fifty feet of the light rail project. Foshay Learning Center is located sixty feet from the proposed project. Theodore T. Alexander Jr. Science Center is within fifty feet of the project. Adams Middle School is within sixty feet of the project, and Central LA Area Middle school #4 is within seventy feet of the project. Furthermore, a number of other schools are less than 100 feet from the proposed project.

Safety is of paramount importance to the parents of students attending schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Noise pollution is a serious concern for parents of students, particularly when many of our students are special education children who cannot afford to be disturbed by such a tremendously loud distraction. It is difficult, at best, for these children to learn under the best of circumstances. It would be nearly impossible for them to learn under the proposed circumstances. The noise created by the light rail is beyond the levels established by the American National Standards Institute for safety and an optimal learning environment. The vibration created by the light rail will also be significant and distracting to the students in the aforementioned schools.

One of the most frightening aspects of this project is there is the possibility of train derailments, and our children could be seriously injured or even killed by such a situation or when walking across the street at one of the multitude of rail crossings along the proposed project line. It is for these reasons the Parent Collaborative has agreed unanimously to write to you with our concerns and wholehearted opposition to this project in its current form.

Sincerely,
Jeanette Hopp, Secretary
Parent Collaborative

The letter can be downloaded in pdf format by clicking here.

Environmental Racism: The Law

2008-05-28T12:29:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: Added Environmental Justice Fact Sheet

Some have emailed asking for a more extensive explanation of "environmental justice" and "environmental racism."

It's best to first look at the two most prominent civil rights protections among many others: Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson and Executive Order 12898 sign by President Bill Clinton in 1994.

Title VI, which was fought for through the blood, sweat, tears and ultimate sacrifices of giants in the civil rights movement reads as the following:

"No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."

And this is how Executive Order 12898 begins:

"[E]ach Federal agency shall make achieving environmental justice part of its mission by identifying and addressing, as appropriate, disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of its programs, policies, and activities on minority populations and low-income populations in the United States..."

The FTA elaborates on these laws and explains how they apply to public transit projects with a powerpoint presentation on their website titled, "Environmental Justice: Principles, Policies, Guidance, and Effective Practices" (ppt), which was delivered at the FTA Region VI Civil Rights Colloquium in March of 2006. Among the slides in the presentation, is the following below, where a screenshot also shows the notes for the slide:

Click on the image to increase the size of the picture and you'll see the following:

Adverse effect--can include economic as well as effects to the human and natural environment.

Disproportionately high adverse effects are those effects that are:

(1) Predominantly borne by a minority or low-income population or

(2) Effects that will be suffered by the minority or low-income population and is appreciably more severe or greater in magnitude than the adverse effect that will be suffered by the non-minority or non-low-income population.

The notes section of the slide states the following:

Adverse effects in transportation: air pollution, noise, vibration, property taking, effects associated with construction such as street closures and loss of business, loss of community cohesion, and dangers to pedestrians

Example of the first case: Bus depots that are disproportionately sited in minority or low-income communities.

Example of the second case: a fixed guideway alignment that would tunnel under predominantly white or affluent communities but would run at-grade in predominantly minority or low-income communities.

Compare the design of the Expo Line Phase 1 west of La Cienega to that in majority-minority South LA and it's clear that Expo Line Phase 1 is textbook environmental racism.

Census Tract Racial Breakdown:

(Brown = majority Hispanic; Grey = majority/plurality black; Pink = majority/plurality Caucasian)

The Culver City Census Tract (Tract 7024) is THE ONLY majority Caucasian census tract and affluent census tract along the Expo Line Phase 1 route. (USC is plurality Caucasian but poor given students lack of income, which technically makes it an "environmental justice community.") In the Culver City census tract, indeed in every residential community in the mile west of La Cienega on Phase 1 of the Expo Line there will be:

a) no children forced to walk across Expo Line tracks

b) no chance of train-vehicle accidents

c) no train horns or crossing gate bells

d) no blight/privacy impacts to residential communities (see Section 4.4-40 of the Expo Line EIR/EIS)

e) no forced commuter detours
f) no delays in emergency services from crossing gates
g) no closed off parks

This is the exact opposite of how the Expo Line will operate in South LA where there are countless at-grade street crossings, almost all without even basic crossing gates, where THOUSANDS of children and HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of cars will be forced to cross every day.

There is an elevated structure at La Brea that is directly adjacent to residential properties having direct privacy impacts.

At some intersections that are directly adjacent to homes, schools and churches there will be noise from crossing gate bells and train horns blowing nearly 1000 a day. At other intersections the train gong will be heard with each and every train crossings.

There are 9 street closures, the traffic impact of which can be felt today.

And the park access at one of our parks will be irreparably closed, while the other will be substantially reduced.

For more information about the Environmental Justice issues in transportation go to the USDOT Environmental Justice website and the FTA Civil Rights web page.

The law is clear. The Expo Line Phase 1 design places disproportionately high and adverse human health and environmental impacts on the majority-minority and poor communities along the alignment compared to the majority Caucasian and most affluent census tract. This is accented by the fact that MTA is spending more money in the 1 mile from La Cienega to the Robertson terminus than in the 4.5 miles in South LA:

185 million for the one mile of the line west of La Cienega to the Culver City terminus

vs.

140 million for the 4.5 miles of the line in South LA from Vermont to Clyde (one block east of La Cienega)

Fix Expo Demands Investigation

2008-05-23T09:42:00.000-07:00

On Thursday, May 22, we went to the MTA to demand an immediate investigation into ethics law violations of our Council Member and MTA Board Member Bernard Parks.

In total disregard for MTA’s ethics rules and California state law, Bernard Parks is taking in money hand over fist from contractors doing business and in current negotiations with MTA. These are hundred million dollar projects with MTA, and thousands upon thousand of contributions to Bernard Parks. It’s incumbent on all oversight agencies and authorities to conduct an extensive investigation to determine how egregious Parks has been.

California Senate Bill 89 (backup link) (“Limits on MTA Contributions”), by then State Senator Tom Hayden, was signed into law during the 1997-1998 session and established the following ethics laws which are still in effect today:

“Neither the owner, an employee, or any member of their immediate families, of any construction company, engineering firm, consultant, legal firm, or any company, vendor, or business entity seeking a contract with the authority shall make a contribution of over ten dollars ($10) in value or amount to a member, alternate member, or employee of the authority, or to any member of their immediate families.

“No member, alternate member, or employee of the authority, or member of their immediate families, shall accept, solicit, or direct a contribution of over ten dollars ($10) in value or amount from any construction company, engineering firm, consultant, legal firm, or any company, vendor, or business entity seeking a contract with the authority.”

And yet Parks has taken at least $21,800 in such illegal contributions:

continue reading...

Controversial MTA contractor Tutor-Saliba, which today is still involved in litigation with MTA for shoddy work done on the Red Line subway, and is currently constructing the new City Council-approved LAPD headquarters has contributed $18,000 alone through their executives and their relatives:

Ronald Tutor: $1,000 on 12/28/07.
Gerarld Brown, Vice President: $1,000 on 12/28/07 (the same day “Homemaker” Patricia Brown gave $1,000).
Mark Fischbach Vice President: $1,000 on 12/28/07 (the same day “Homemaker” Rosemary Fischbach gave $1,000).
James Foster, Equipment Manager: $1,000 on 12/28/07.
James Frost, Construction Executive: $1,000 on 12/31/07 (the same day “Homemaker” Nicole Frost gave $1,000).
Joseph Guglielmo, Construction Manager: $1,000 on 12/28/07 (the same day “Homemaker” Ardis Guglielmo gave $1,000).
Michael Kerchner, Vice President: $1,000 on 12/28/07 (the same day “Homemaker” Carolyn Kerchner gave $1,000).
Robert Lewis, Executive: $1,000 on 12/31/07.
David Randall, Sr. Vice President: $1,000 on 12/28/07.
Roger Sexton, Business Executive: $1,000 on 12/28/07 (the same day “Homemaker” Diane Sexton gave $1,000).
Williams Sparks, CFO: $1,000 on 1/24/08 (the same day “Homemaker” Vicki Sparks gave $1,000).

Koar Development Group, LLC and Archeon International Group are jointly building a $160 million dollar mixed-use project with the MTA at the Wilshire/Western Station.

Archeon International Group contributed $1,000 on 2/25/08.
Koar Development Group CEO Edward Dong, contributed $500 on 2/29/08.

Hope Bullock III of Bullock & Associates, Inc., the Utilities Consultant on the Draft EIR for the Canoga Transportation Corridor project contributed $300 to Parks the same day the EIR was released on 3/5/08.

MTA contractor URS Corp Vice President Gerard Orozco gave Parks $1,000 on 12/31/07.

Carter & Burgess, Inc. Professional Engineer Bruce Russell gave Parks $1,000 on 12/17/07.

Bernard Parks put MTA in the mirror and saw ATM. The dirty money has clearly compromised his ability to be independent and serve his constituents.

Despite amassing our large and growing coalition of South LA community groups to encourage MTA to address the safety hazards and other adverse impacts of the current Expo Line design through the South LA community, the concerns of our group have fallen on deaf ears with Parks. In a moment captured on camera last fall and available on YouTube, Parks dismissively told the group leader Damien Goodmon, “Just because you don’t like the line, you should stop wasting other people’s time, because you have a concern about it.”

Additionally, in response to community concerns about the safety of the design of the Expo Line given its similarity to the MTA’s Blue Line, which is the nation’s deadliest light rail line by multiples at 90 deaths from 815 accidents, Parks’ defended the safety record of the MTA’s Blue Line.

Parks’ actions were confusing, but it’s all beginning to make sense now. Our advocacy on behalf of the safety of the children in his district, and the parents who have trusted him to protect them, is clearly interfering with whatever backroom deals he’s made for his personal political gain.

The former police chief is acting like a true criminal.

As covered on Front Page Online

UPDATE:

List of Bernard Parks for Supervisor Donors from 1/1/07 - 12/31/07
List of Bernard Parks for Supervisor Donors from 1/1/08 - 3/17/08

Expo Update

2008-05-21T06:42:00.000-07:00

$54 Million More for Culver City, $0 for South LA

Last month the MTA Board approved an additional $54 million for an overpass in Culver City from the same source of money we've been requesting they use to build the Expo Line underground in our South LA community and next to our schools and churches. The $54 million is part of an influx of $222 million extra dollars for the Expo Line, with not a single dollar going for putting the Expo Line underground through South LA. This is simply the latest act proving that this is not an issue about MTA's access to money, it's about their failure to value South LA lives and communities.

The MTA is now spending more money for Expo Line Phase 1 in the ONE MILE west of La Cienega than they are IN THE ENTIRE 4 MILES IN SOUTH LA! If the MTA spent the same amount per mile in South LA as they are in the 1-mile from La Cienega to ~~La Brea~~ Robertson [typo] they could put the Expo Line in a tunnel or trench, as we've been requesting, and still would have enough left over to paint every house on Exposition Blvd.

But instead they're building Expo Line Phase 1 at mostly street-level in South LA, but totally grade separated west of La Cienega. MTA is building it in a way that forces thousands of our South LA children to walk across the tracks, with 225-ton trains coming 35-55 mph 240 times a day, while not one child will have to cross the tracks west of La Cienega. We in South LA will have 9 of our streets closed, our community divided, our traffic worsened, and our emergency services delayed, while none of that will occur west of La Cienega. We in South LA will hear 1000 train horns and crossing gate bells every day, 22 hours a day in the middle of our residential areas and next to our schools, while no train horn or crossing gate bell will ever be heard west of La Cienega.

Call it what it is: Plain-old fashioned ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM!

Legal & Political Update

We've found attorneys (very good attorneys by the way) to take up our cause in the courts, but the legal part is only half of it. The politicians who made the decision to invest west of La Cienega and not in South LA need to hear from YOU. Our day in court, must be met with our participation in the streets!

Important Community Forums: 5/22 & 5/29

Please come to the upcoming community forums to hear about these and other very important Expo Line community updates.

The first forum is this Thursday, May 22nd at 6:30 - 8:30 pm at Dorsey HS Auditorium (3537 Farmdale Ave).

The second forum is next Thursday, May 29th at Foshay Learning Center Auditorium at 6:30 PM (Western & Exposition).

We must stand united and show the decisionmakers that we take this issue seriously.

Now Accepting Donations

Last month our collaborative group established an all-volunteer nonprofit, United Community Associations, to begin collecting donations so we can host more community forums and distribute more flyers to keep the community informed on this important issue. We need your help to keep this movement growing. Whether you can give $5, $50 or $500, every penny of your tax-deductible donation is greatly appreciated and will go to good use. Checks can be emailed to P.O. Box 781267, Los Angeles, CA 90016 or you can make a secure online donation by clicking the donate button to the left.

As covered on Front Page Online

Expo Refuses to Come to Community Meetings

2008-05-15T19:44:00.000-07:00

In April of 2008, the community groups and neighborhood councils decided to organize balanced Town Hall meetings, that allowed the major parties in dispute and the Expo Authority to discuss the issue before the community.

Reflecting both the utter contempt the Expo has for the community, and willingness to violate their legal agreement between the City of Los Angeles, Expo refused to show, and instead sent a couple of teenagers they paid off the street to pass out flyers in front of the auditorium calling the community group and neighborhood councils liars.

Section 2.0 of the Master Cooperative Agreement between the City of Los Angeles and Expo Line Construction Authority states:

2.0 Community Notifications and Review

The Authority is responsible to coordinate all designs of the Exposition Metro Line with the Council Offices, Neighborhood Councils, and community groups that are affected by the Project. The Authority is responsible to work with the communities to seek consensus of these design elements impacting the traffic circulation, safety, appearance, and quality of life. These design elements include but are not limited to architecture, aesthetic of the stations, noise and vibration controls, and sound walls to the extent of complying with the approved Final Supplemental Environment Impact ReporUFinal Supplement Environmental Impact Statement (FSEIR/FSEIS) documents. The Authority is responsible to collaborate with City Departments and Bureaus to determine proper and effective mitigation measures to address community concerns.

Displaying the disrespect our local elected officials hold for the community and neighborhood councils, not one of the Expo Authority or MTA representatives showed either.

Below is the correspondence between our group and the Expo Authority staff and politicians.

Continue reading...

On April 29, 2008 we sent them the following email invitation, and followed-up with formal invitations:

Dear Expo Authority Board of Directors & Elected Officials:

Partially in response to the community's disapproval of the Expo Authority's community meeting formats, which fail to permit an open public forum and resulted in a walkout of an important Environmental Assessment meeting, the neighborhood councils and community organizations have decided to organize two community forums on the Expo Line for the upcoming month of May.

The Expo Line community forum at Dorsey HS will start at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday May 22, 2008.

The Expo Line community forum at Foshay Learning Center Auditorium will start at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday May 29, 2008.

The format will be as follows:

-Expo Authority Presentation & Statement (20 mins)
-LAUSD OEHS Statement (5 mins)
-Parent Collaborative Statement (5 mins)
-UTLA Statement (5 mins)
-School Principal/Teacher Representative on this issue Statement (5 mins)
-Fix Expo Group Presentation & Statement (20 mins)
-Elected Officials Statement (20 mins)
-Open Public Forum with Question & Answer Period (40 mins)

The format and date of the meetings are locked.

Hard copy invitations will be mailed on Thursday, May 1 to the expected presenters, and the local elected representatives, all of whom are members of the Expo Authority Board of Directors and/or the MTA Board of Directors:

-Expo Chair & Council Member Jan Perry
-Expo Vice Chair & Council Member Herb Wesson
-Expo Board Member & Supervisor Yvonne Burke
-Expo Board Member & Council Member Bernard Parks
-MTA Incoming Chair & Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa
-Expo Authority CEO Rick Thorpe
-LAUSD School Board Member Marguerite LaMotte
-Ed Morelan for LAUSD OEHS
-Mary Johnson of the Parent Collaborative
-Elaine LeBoeuf of the UTLA

Invitations will be sent to the state and federal legislators as well. Since their work place is far outside the area, Sacramento and Washington D.C. respectively, for them and only for them, written correspondence will be accepted if they are not personally able to attend:

-Assembly Speaker-Elect Karen Bass
-Assembly Member Mike Davis
-State Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas
-Congresswoman Diane Watson
-Senator Diane Feinstein
-Senator Barbara Boxer

We look forward to your attendance.

Sincerely,
Damien Goodmon

CC:
Howard Blume, LA Times
Steve Hymon, LA Times
Steve Lopez, LA Times
Jeff Rabin, LA Times
Elaine LeBoeuf, United Teachers Los Angeles
Hattie Babb, West Adams NC President
Mike Urena, Empowerment Congress North Area NDC President
Expo Authority CEO Rick Thorpe
Expo Authority Public Relations Representative Gabriela Gonzalez
Expo Authority Public Relations Representative Adrienne Gardner

BCC:
Additional Members of the Press & Community

14 days later, on May 13, we hadn't received any response from the Expo Authority, so we sent another email:

To: Expo Authority CEO Rick Thorpe, Expo Executives Joel Sandberg and Eric Olson, Expo Consultant James Okazaki, and Expo Community Relations Representatives Gabriela Gonzalez, Greg Starosky and Adrienne Gardner

Dear Expo Authority CEO Rick Thorpe & Expo Authority staff,

The Expo Authority has been allotted 20 mins at both the May 22nd and 29th forums to deliver powerpoint presentations and if you choose, be available for questions.

Please confirm by Monday, May 19th if the Expo Authority will be available to deliver information to the community and answer community questions at Dorsey HS, and identify the presenters so we can add them to the agenda.

And please confirm by Monday, May 26th if the Expo Authority will be available to deliver information to the community and answer community questions at the May 29th Foshay Learning Center, and identify the presenters so we can add them to the agenda.

Thank you so much for efforts in working with the community.

All the best,
Damien Goodmon

CC:
George Bartleson, Dorsey HS Principal
Veronique Wills, Foshay Learning Center Principal
Hattie Babb, West Adams Neighborhood Council President
Mike Urena, North Area Neighborhood Development Council President

The next day, May 14, 2008 Rick Thorpe, the Expo Authority CEO sent the following email:

Dear Damien Goodmon and Interested Parties;

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is the responsible party for determining the safety of all proposed rail crossings in the State of California. The CPUC has a very extensive public process that is currently underway for the two remaining crossings that have yet to be approved near Dorsey High School and The Foshay Learning Center. The Construction Authority has and will continue to be an active participant in that process.

The CPUC has set a schedule and an open public process for addressing any outstanding grade crossing issues at Dorsey High School (Farmdale crossing) and the Foshay Learning Center (Harvard Blvd. crossing). We believe that this is the appropriate venue for all interested parties to discuss the remaining grade crossing issues on the Expo light rail project. Therefore, upon advice of our legal counsel, the Expo Construction Authority will not be participating in the upcoming forums organized by parties that are actively opposing the Authority’s pending applications before the CPUC.

Sincerely,
Rick Thorpe
CEO

Expo's refusal to show was a violation of the Master Cooperative Agreement. Furthermore, under their "legal prohibition" standard ridiculously stated by Expo, any public agency ever involved in any legal dispute/lawsuit with any group would never be required to answer community groups/neighborhood council questions or respond publicly to community concerns.

We responded to Mr. Thorpe and the Expo Authority board members the next day, May 15, 2008:

Mr. Thorpe & Expo Authority Board Members and staff:

As Mr. Thorpe knows well, the Expo Line CPUC proceedings are currently limited to the Harvard Pedestrian Tunnel at Foshay and the street-level Farmdale crossing at Dorsey, which the Expo Line Construction Authority is aggressively pushing through the CPUC.

The Expo Authority's tenacious pursuit for approval to go across the Farmdale crossing at Dorsey HS at 55 mph (pdf) is completely contrary to the commitment of the Expo Authority Board Members, which include Bernard Parks, Yvonne Burke, Herb Wesson and Jan Perry who passed a motion to begin an environmental assessment of an underpass, overpass and pedestrian bridge at the crossing at the February board meeting. (pdf)

Given these conflicting actions, community members are concerned that the motion was simply a public relations tactic and not an actual commitment to address the community and school district's well expressed concern at the Farmdale crossing, where nearly 2000 students walk across every day in upwards of 108 students per min.

Nonetheless, as Mr. Thorpe knows, since he was made personally aware of the problems around Foshay by the Foshay Principal last Thursday, the issues that are currently being experienced by the residential and school community and have not been addressed by the Expo Authority despite repeated requests, (such as construction mitigation, soil contamination, project budget allocation, etc.) are not within the scope of the CPUC proceedings and thus that is not the relevant venue.

Additionally, the CPUC "public process" Mr. Thorpe mentions is simply a public participation hearing, where public comments - which again will be limited to the two crossings, will be transcribed. It is not a question and answer session, where the Expo Authority would have to answer the concerns of the community in an open forum.

Given that the Expo Authority has refused to allow such open public forums at their community meetings since the fall of 2006!, we are disappointed, but not at all surprised by the Expo Authority's decision to not attend the community's forums on the Expo Line. The community recently walked out of a public meeting where your staff refused to answer questions with a public forum held in our own backyard. (link)

But so it is clear, the May 22nd and 29th forums are being conducted in coordination with the neighborhood councils who are recognized city agencies, and are intended to facilitate community understanding and discussion of important city and regional issues.

The agenda for the forums is balanced and provides 40 mins for the Expo Authority (20 mins for Expo Authority staff and 20 mins for Expo Authority board members), 40 mins for the groups with concerns about the project, followed a 40 mins public forum for audience questions and answers. The Expo Authority was also given the distinct advantage of opening AND closing the presentation/statement period.

The neighborhood council's have requested such forums from the Expo Authority for well over a year.

The North Area Neighborhood Council in the summer of 2007 attempted to facilitate a one-on-one debate between Mr. Thorpe and myself with public questions, and the Authority refused.

The Foshay Principal has said her request for a forum at her school of 3400 students, which is within 50 feet of the Expo Line tracks goes back 4 years.

I find it unfortunate that the Expo Authority staff and board members feel it has no obligation to address the community about the largest public works project in the region, in a manner that is respectful of the South LA community. This public relations strategy is does nothing to heal the gulf that currently exists between the the South LA community and the Expo Authority, of whom NONE of the project managers live in the South LA community.

Alas, the May 22nd and 29th forums will be conducted with or without you, and the elected representatives of the area who have been sent invitations and who the community expects to attend can report back to staff.

Perhaps after the Dorsey HS forum on the 22nd, Parks, Burke, Wesson and Perry will actually use the power they have as the board members of the Expo Authority to direct you to present at the Foshay forum on the 29th to answer the questions of the people who they were elected to represent. Although, given past actions, we would be disappointed but not at all surprised if chose not to.

By the way, these are the same people, the South LA community that is, who pay all of your salaries, are footing the bill for the $862 million public works project, are currently absorbing the construction impacts that the Expo Authority has failed to appropriately mitigate, and are being expected to absorb the safety hazards, traffic impacts and other environmental impacts of the Expo Line. Members of the community seem to feel that that is too easily forgotten.

I respectfully suggest, the Expo Authority and board members do a much better job of remembering these facts and begin to act with them in mind.

Sincerely,
Damien Goodmon

CC:
Elected Officials & FTA

BCC:
-The Press
-The South LA Community
-The Civil Rights & Legal Community of Los Angeles

Expo Line Community Forums

2008-05-13T14:49:00.000-07:00

To bring the community up to speed on the recent political and legal developments, and partially in response to the Expo Line Construction Authority's refusal to hold open public forums in their "community update meetings", the neighborhood councils, community groups, and Dorsey HS Alumni Association, in coordination with the Fix Expo Campaign and schools will be hosting two community forums in the month of May:

THURSDAY - MAY 22, 2008
6:30 - 8:30 PM
DORSEY HS AUDITORIUM
3537 Farmdale Ave, Los Angeles, CA
(about 0.5-mile east of the Rodeo/La Brea intersection)

THURSDAY - MAY 29, 2008
6:30 - 8:30 PM
Foshay Learning Center Auditorium
3751 Harvard Blvd, Los Angeles, CA
(one block east of Western at Exposition Blvd)

The forum will have presentations/statements by the Expo Construction Authority, LAUSD, UTLA, Parent Collaborative, Fix Expo Campaign and if they're in attendance our local and state elected politicians, followed by an open question and answer public forum!

South LA Left Out Again as MTA Increases the Expo Line Budget $54 Million

2008-04-30T06:50:00.000-07:00

On Thursday April 24th, the MTA Board voted to increase the Expo Line budget by $54 million for a Culver City overpass, increasing the project budget to $862 million dollars for the 8.5-mile light rail line from Downtown LA to Culver City. $4 million of the $54 million came from the City of Culver City, while the remaining $50 million came from State Proposition 1B, the $19 billion transportation bond that was passed by voters in November of 2006. $218 million of the bond has gone towards the increase in the Expo Line budget, which was just $640 million six months ago.

Prop. 1B is the same resource the Fix Expo Campaign been requesting MTA go after for grade separations in South LA since the day the bond was passed. It's even on our petitions (pdf). Yet the MTA keeps telling us, "There's no money."

As Carol Tucker of the Baldwin Neighborhood Homeowners Association has said, "They found the money for the Figueroa underpass at USC and they found the money for overpasses in Culver City. They find the money for everything and everywhere except South LA. Have they no shame?"

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We remain concerned about the safety and environmental impacts of the light rail line design as is passes through South LA primarily at street level. The street-level design is unsafe and as evidence by the MTA's Blue Line which at 91 deaths and 802 accidents to date is the deadliest light rail line in the country.

The close proximity of several schools to the rail line, namely Dorsey High School and Foshay Learning Center, has prompted action from School Board Member Marguerite LaMotte, the LAUSD Board of Education, LAUSD Parent Collaborative and UTLA all requesting grade separation at all or some intersections.

The grade separations and street realignment west of La Cienega means no child will have to walk across and no car will have to drive across the Expo Line tracks in Culver City. Yet South LA is being told we have to accept these safety risks.

As child advocate and West Adams Neighborhood Council member Clint Simmons says, "Instead of insulting our intelligence by telling us they can't find the money to build underpasses in South LA, MTA should just admit that killing black and brown kids, and ruining South LA school environments and communities is a part of doing business."

An astonishing fact is that MTA is spending more money to build the the 1 mile from La Cienega to Robertson than they are in the 4 miles from Vermont to La Brea. That's not right, and placing the bulk of the safety hazards and disproportionate environmental impacts in majority-minority South LA communities is textbook environmental racism and against the law.

It's inevitable but we're going to have to go to court. And by our side will be the international law firm of Sonnenschein, Nath and Rosenthal, LLP. The group's legal strategy will be headed by firm partners Ivor Samson, a recipient of the prestigious 2007 California Lawyer of the Year award, and Christopher Prince, who when he was at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund was instrumental in the landmark environmental justice case Labor/Community Strategy Center vs. MTA, which resulted in a 10-year consent decree.

"This firm is huge, these guys are winners, and they know how the MTA operates," said Tucker. "It speaks to the level of injustice that they've agreed to represent us pro bono."

As covered on Front Page Online: Culver City Was Taken Care of, Why Not South Los Angeles?

MTA to the South LA Community: Take Your Concerns to the Back of the Room

2008-04-10T13:28:00.000-07:00

Less than 24 hours after a 75-year old woman was killed and a 19-year old young man was placed in critical condition in separate incidents with the MTA's Blue Line, dozens of South LA community members concerned that the MTA's proposed light rail Expo Line would lead to similar fates walked out in protest of a community meeting in the auditorium of Leimert Park's Tom Bradley Elementary School after their insistent request for an open public forum for questions and answers was denied by Expo Line project mangers.

The community meeting, conducted by the Expo Line Construction Authority, was intended to discuss the proposed movement of one of the power substations along the route for the proposed $858 million dollar light rail project currently under construction from downtown to Culver City. But when the room was told about the previous day's accidents and the history of substations on MTA's other light rail lines catching fire, the room demanded an on the record question and answer period, only to be forcibly denied by the Expo Authority.

"We were told that if we wanted to have our comments recorded we had to go in the corner and a court reporter would write them down," said Jackie Ryan of Save Leimert Neighborhood Coalition. "I was completely insulted," she continued. "They would light the place on fire if they tried to do that in other cities."

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Tuesday night's meeting was the second Expo Line community meeting in South LA in the past week in which attendees vocally objected to the Expo Authority's refusal to answer questions in an open forum. After a lengthy powerpoint presentation on April 1 at Holman United Methodist Church, the audience erupted in anger to what they described as "divide and conquer tactics" when an Expo Authority public relations representative told the audience to address their questions to the several Expo Line employees on the outskirts of the room.

"It's clear that they don't want to answer the tough questions in front of the entire community, and want to discourage people from speaking out," said Damien Goodmon of the Citizens' Campaign to Fix the Expo Line. "The facts are what they are: this line is designed primarily like the MTA's Blue Line, which at over 91 deaths and 802 accident is the deadliest light rail line in the country. Unless our politicians force a redesign of the primarily street-level running in South LA, people in our community will die - children will die."

"Where are our elected representatives," asked a Baldwin Vista resident at Tuesday's meeting. When it was announced that Bernard Parks, Yvonne Burke, Jan Perry and Herb Wesson all sit on the Board of Directors of the Expo Authority and that community leaders have spent over a year attempting to persuade the Board to have public forums, the resident responded, "If they're treating us like this, they need to be replaced."

Mr. Goodmon announced that the community group expects to finalize an agreement with a "very prestigious" law firm to represent the large and growing community coalition by the end of next week. "Like black and brown leaders before us we're going to have to go to court for justice," he said. "The difference is, we're not going to court to fight white racist politicians, we're going to fight politicians of our own color."

Expo Line Inconvenient Truths

2008-03-26T16:58:00.000-07:00

The Expo Line Construction Authority, with the approval of the Board of Directors (which includes Bernard Parks, Yvonne Burke, Jan Perry & Herb Wesson) has distributed an Orwellian-titled flyer, “The Real Facts” of the Expo Line, filled with true lies and half-truths. The most astonishing aspect of the propaganda is that the piece attacks the South LA community. It seems unfathomable, but a public agency and publicly elected politicians, spent the public's own money to attack the public!

Ernest Hemingway once said, “The best ammunition against lies is the truth." In that spirit here are just a few of the Inconvenient Truths about the MTA's Phase 1 Expo Line proposed design:

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FACT #1: THE EXPO LINE IS DESIGNED PRIMARILY LIKE THE BLUE LINE, NOT THE PASADENA GOLD LINE

The Pasadena Gold Line is a primarily isolated track, while the Expo Line track is directly adjacent to vehicle lanes on major thoroughfares and travels across major streets. Comparatively, the Pasadena Gold Line crosses no street at street level (known as “at-grade”) that has vehicular traffic volumes as high as those on the Expo Line like Crenshaw, Western, Normandie and Vermont (which don't even have basic crossing gates). On the Pasadena Gold Line, at similar high-traffic streets there are underpasses and an overpass (known as “grade separations”). In fact, there are 41 grade-separated crossings on the Pasadena Gold Line. There are ZERO proposed grade separations on the Expo Line from just west of Figueroa to just east of La Brea.

MTA uses the Pasadena Gold Line false analogy to distract the public from the clear resemblance of the Expo Line to their Blue Line. The Blue Line which travels primarily at-grade from Downtown Los Angeles through the communities of South LA, Watts, Willowbrook, and Compton en route to Long Beach is the nation's deadliest and most accident-prone light rail line in the U.S. at 89 deaths and over 798 accidents to date! (SOURCE: MTA's own Summary of Blue Line Train/Vehicle and Train/Pedestrian Accidents). A ProQuest Newsstand search of media reports of Blue Line accidents and deaths reveals that among the deaths and injuries are over a dozen young people under the age of 21 (there are certainly multiples more). And despite the implementation of numerous safety mitigation measures, all of which are proposed for the Expo Line, accidents still frequently occur today.

The MTA's lengthy 1998 Booz Allen Hamilton study proves that the MTA knows the conditions around the Blue Line that result in the high accident rate. These conditions are even more severe on the Expo Line corridor. Simply, MTA is knowingly and callously repeating the same fatal design in South LA, and they won't even admit to it, because they know by doing so, they'd be admitting that lots of people will die and be injured.

FACT #2: THERE ARE GRADE SEPARATIONS IN CULVER CITY BECAUSE CULVER CITY DEMANDED IT!

As the track exists today there are four street-level crossings west of La Cienega: Jefferson/National, Hayden/National and Washington/National (the tracks cross twice). The original plan was to cross each of the streets at-grade, but Culver City opposed the plan, as stated in the Federal Transit Administration's Record of Decision for the Expo Line Project specifies:

“The original [preferred Expo Line plan] adopted by the [MTA] in 2001 called for at-grade rail crossings at all intersections in the City of Culver City and an at-grade station at Venice/Robertson...This configuration conflicted with the adopted city General Plan that called for no at-grade crossings and full grade-separation of all crossings in that city. Primarily for this reason, the City of Culver City opposed the project...in 2001.” (pp. 17-18)

Four years later, after a “compromise agreement” between the City of Culver City and MTA, the final plan added a grade separation at Washington/National, an extension of the La Cienega/Jefferson overpass nearly 1000 feet beyond Jefferson/National into Culver City, and a complete realignment of National Blvd so the train would not have cross Hayden/National, nor any other street in Culver City at street-level. As a result of these changes and investments, WEST OF LA CIENEGA THERE WILL BE:

a) no children forced to walk across Expo Line tracks

b) no chance of train-vehicle accidents

c) no train horns or crossing gate bells

d) no blight/privacy impacts to residential communities (see Section 4.4-40 of the EIR/EIS)

e) no forced commuter detours
f) no delays in emergency services from crossing gates
g) no closed off parks

This is the polar opposite of how the Expo Line will impact South LA. In fact, the environmental impacts in the Culver City census tract are substantially lower than in any other census tract in the Phase 1 alignment. Additionally, the 2000 Census data reveals that the Culver City census tract, along with the USC census tract, happen to be the only majority Caucasian census tracks along the entire alignment (pink). The Culver City census tract is the only majority Caucasian middle to upper-income census track along the entire alignment. The remaining census tracts in Phase 1 are majority African-American (grey) and majority Hispanic (brown):

Download our Environmental Justice Fact Sheet.

FACT #3: MTA IS SPENDING MORE MONEY IN THE 1 MILE WEST OF LA CIENEGA THAN IN THE 4 MILES IN SOUTH LA

The upgrades from the Culver City negotiations and “compromise agreement” were not cheap. In fact, the MTA is spending more money for the 1 mile of the Expo Line from La Cienega/Jefferson to Venice/Robertson, than they are for the entire 4 miles in South LA from Vermont to La Brea. If the MTA spent the same amount of money per mile from Vermont to La Brea as they are in the 1 mile from La Cienega to Robertson they could build the Expo Line in a trench or tunnel through South LA as the community requests, and still have enough money left over to paint every house on Exposition Blvd.

The disparate design and environmental impacts in Culver City versus South LA are unacceptable to South Los Angeles community members and the basis of our claim that the Expo Line design is textbook ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM. It is immoral and illegal (see Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Executive Order 12898).

To be clear, the Fix Expo Campaign applauds Culver City stakeholders for standing up to preserve their communities and protect their citizens. BUT MTA SHOULD NOT FORCE SOUTH LA TO ACCEPT ANYTHING LESS...AND WE WONT!

UPDATE: Added Census Tract Fact Sheet

Fix Expo Position & Goals

2008-02-28T00:04:00.000-08:00

Because there's been a substantial amount of misinformation spread about our purpose and goals, we submitted a memo to the MTA board specifying who we are and what we desire.

MEMO

TO: Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority Board of Directors
FR: Damien Goodmon, Fix Expo Coordinator
DATE: February 28, 2008
RE: The Fix Expo Campaign Goals and Position

WHAT IS OUR POSITION?

Below grade (trench, cut-and-cover or bored tunnel) from Figueroa to La Brea
Fix Expo requests the existing funding for the Expo Line project be used to modify the design from Figueroa to La Brea (a distance of 4 miles) to below grade in either a trench, cut-and-cover, bored tunnel, or some combination thereof, with cost efficient open-cut stations at Menlo (to serve both Vermont and Exposition Park venues), Western, Crenshaw and La Brea. To this end we offer our organizational support to all political efforts towards this modification.

Begin Operations ASAP
The Expo EIR/EIS identifies and clears minimum operable segments at Vermont and Crenshaw. The project can begin operation to one of these temporary termini (or possibly further through EIR modification) while environmental clearance and additional funding is obtained.

The EIR/EIS also clears an extended undercrossing to Watt Way (0.1 miles from Vermont). Extension of the undercrossing to Vermont should be easily obtained. Further utilities under the right-of-way are being moved not just around the trench (at Figueroa), but all the way to Vermont.

By not requesting the Flower Street portion be grade separated, the Fix Expo Campaign position allows the Expo Line construction to continue and operations to begin at least to Vermont with little modification to the EIR/EIS.

COST ESTIMATES

Based on the Expo Authority's own estimates of trench and the MTA's recently completed Eastside Extension tunnels construction cost the additional construction cost to Expo would be is $245-305 million.

Cost savings can be obtained by constructing shallow cost-efficient open cut (trench) stations, as opposed to deep multi-level subway stations, and combining the Vermont and Exposition Park station (at Menlo) with portals leading to Vermont and Watt Way.

WHY NOT ELEVATED?

Almost the entire Exposition Blvd portion of Phase 1 of the Expo Line is directly adjacent to homes, churches and schools. From Arlington to Crenshaw the residences directly abut the right-of-way. The noise, blight, and privacy/shade impacts of elevated alignment along Exposition Blvd would irreparably harm the community, and could not meet federal noise and vibration clearance.

The characteristics of the corridor from Vermont to La Brea make below grade the only alternative to the unacceptable at-grade design.

FINANCING

Proposition 1B
4-6 billion in Prop 1B is specifically for mass transit capital projects, a separate $250 million is specifically for grade separations

Proposition 1C/Tax Increment Financing/CRA Bonds
Several of the station locations are in LA CRA project areas (Vermont, Crenshaw, La Brea). Prop 1C provides $850 million for infrastructure improvements to facilitate urban “infill” development & $300 million for dense development around public transit.

Bond Against Future Investment
Additional investments along the corridor will drastically improve future planned rail projects in the LRTP constrained plan. Building the Crenshaw/Exposition intersection below grade with a WYE would eliminate the need rebuild the station in the future. Building Arlington to Crenshaw grade separated allows the Crenshaw line to operate, otherwise with 45-54 trains a day per intersection (Expo and Crenshaw combined) crossing gates in this section would be down 50-68% of the time (40-45 seconds each), having traffic impacts that would not allow the project to be environmentally cleared.

Any additional funding strategies that can be conceived, including air quality, traffic mitigation, and public safety resources, and public-private partnerships.

Fix Expo Statement on Today's Expo Line Farmdale Vote

2008-02-07T07:58:00.000-08:00

Today, our South LA community is literally fighting to save lives.

We're fighting because a multitude of citizen voices that until some months ago were not very well organized were ignored for decades.

Ignored by MTA. Ignored by LADOT. Ignored by the Federal Transit Administration. Ignored by the California Public Utilities Commission. Ignored by Yvonne Burke, Bernie Parks, Jan Perry and Herb Wesson who all sit on the Expo Line Board, which is responsible for building the Expo Line.

In the past, the South LA's safety and environmental impact concerns were dismissed not on merit, but because the voices of the individuals speaking were not viewed as powerful enough to warrant attention and respect. As a transit advocate I find that tragic. Tragic because, as I've come to learn over the last year, it means that how the Expo Line and others in our region are built is based not on good or safe transit planning, but instead on political power.

Well over the past few months the scales of power in South LA have shifted. Our community, which has long been neglected has risen, and we have brought with us an increase in our expectations of our local political leadership. With a strong united voice the South LA community has proclaimed to our local elected leaders we are NOT your subjects; you are elected to work with and serve US.

This is our moment South LA - this is our time.

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Through much trial, tribulation and legal efforts we, the South LA community, have after decades of talking FINALLY convinced our local officials (Wesson, Parks, Perry and Burke) to reevaluate the proposed street-level Farmdale Avenue railroad crossing. At Farmdale the train would pass 240 times a day, just 30 feet from classrooms at Dorsey High School. A train-car accident here, like the hundreds of train-car accidents on the MTA Blue Line, would push the car or train into Dorsey HS classrooms or directly where hundreds of Dorsey HS students would be standing. Building the train at street-level across Farmdale would be a historic tragedy waiting to happen.

The MTA has known from the beginning that a street-level crossing at Dorsey was problematic and did not meet South LA community standards. They were told by us and they were told by the LAUSD. Interest groups in Santa Monica knew as well, and yet these interest groups refuse to support anything other than a street-level crossing at Farmdale, putting in danger OUR South LA children and ruining OUR South LA classrooms. As we, the South LA community work to address this issue, the Santa Monica interest group is pressuring on OUR elected officials to deny OUR community the safety that an underpass would provide.

The pillars of the Santa Monica interest groups' opposition are as misleading as the information distributed by MTA/Expo (as explained at www.FixExpo.org). The basis of their opposition is also revealing. Their statement is that by delaying this project to study an overpass or underpass at Farmdale the fate of line would be jeopardized. Stated simply, THEY ARE MORE CONCERNED ABOUT GETTING THE EXPO LINE TO SANTA MONICA THAN THE LIVES OF OUR SOUTH LA CHILDREN!!!

So it is clear, it is the MTA and our local politicians that waited two decades until this very late juncture to address the Farmdale crossing problem, (and we're still waiting for them to address the many other problematic crossings in South LA). And now that the day is finally here, Santa Monica interest groups seek to combat our South LA community, which is is FINALLY being heard, because we have dared to come together and demand something of our political leadership.

Well we have a message for the Santa Monica interest group and politicians who could care less if the Expo Line catches fire in South LA, just as long as the fire is out when it reaches the Santa Monica border: Your input and negative interference in South LA is unwelcome.

WE, THE SOUTH LA COMMUNITY, WILL DETERMINE HOW THE FARMDALE CROSSING WILL BE DESIGNED.

OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS WERE ELECTED BY US, ARE ACCOUNTABLE TO US, AND WE EXPECT THEM TO REPRESENT US!

Here are excerpts of the PUC hearing on Farmdale at Dorsey HS on November 5:

To view the some of the rest of the statements from the meeting to our YouTube page: link.

Thank you for all your hard work.

Strength in unity.

Damien Goodmon
Coordinator, Citizens' Campaign to Fix the Expo Rail Line
dg@fixexpo.org

P.S. To email the Expo Line Board (Parks, Perry, Burke and Wesson) along with Mayor Villaraigosa to tell them to support South LA's request to study an underpass at Farmdale, just copy and paste the following email addresses or click on the link:

councilmember.parks@lacity.org, councilmember.wesson@lacity.org, councilmember.perry@lacity.org, seconddistrict@lacbos.org, zev@lacbos.org, alan.corlin@culvercity.org, pam-oconnor@santa-monica.org, mayor@lacity.org

As covered on Front Page Online: Rebuking Santa Monica for Putting Itself Ahead of Our Safety

Fix Expo Statement on This Week's Blue Line Fatalities

2007-11-29T18:57:00.000-08:00

FIX EXPO STATEMENT AT THE MTA BOARD MEETING

November 29, 2007

Delivered By Damien Goodmon, Coordinator

The Fix Expo group has come together to support changing your Expo Line design through majority-minority South LA from the Exposition Park trench at Figueroa to the La Brea overpass to below grade in trench, cut-and-cover or bored tunnel.

We speak during public comment to mention the two people your Blue Line killed just this week – as I see there is no mention of their deaths on your long agenda.

This brings the total of Blue Line deaths to at least 90 – at least 29 of them in the past 5 years, which along with your 800 accidents in 17 years is multiples more than any other light rail line in the country in the same 17 year span of time.

Some claim we've gotten too emotional about this issue. I ask, how can one not?

How can one not feel deeply about the betrayal and abandonment by those elected to represent us on an issue as important as environmental racism, death and injury.

Indeed there are few things elected officials can do to ensure near absolute safety and investing in grade separation is one of them.

To this end we will fight and pursue all legal and political avenues to ensure our children won't be added to your unnamed unacknowledged list of at-grade light rail victims.

MTA: GUILTY of Environmental Racism

2007-11-02T12:20:00.000-07:00

Any evaluation of the design of the Expo Line shows that MTA is guilty of environmental racism.

The Disparate Impact

In 1995, knowing MTA was planning the Expo Line, the City Council of Culver City adopted a measure in their General Plan prohibiting at-grade crossings within their city boundaries. Shortly thereafter, in 2001 MTA published their Draft Environmental Impact Report/Statement for the Expo Line that had ALL at-grade crossings in Culver City. Culver City backed up their initial no at-grade crossings position with another measure in 2001, this time adding no elevated crossings next to residential areas.

Two years later, Metro adopted their Grade Crossing Policy, which is more of a political document to explain why MTA doesn't have to grade separate, than an evaluation of the hazards to determine where grade separation is required (see pg. 7 to 17 of the Reply Brief). The MTA Grade Crossing Policy, establishes an arbitrarily high vehicle count per lane per hour threshold that must be met for a street to receive grade separation. Even with the Grade Crossing Policy, MTA determined that both intersections in Culver City (Washington/National and Jefferson/National) wouldn't meet their threshold to require grade separation. They were to be built at-grade. Shortly thereafter, Culver City threatened to not sign-off on the project unless there were no at-grade crossings in their city.

The end result of the negotiation between MTA and Culver City was a decision by MTA to:

a) extend the Jefferson/La Cienega overpass 1,000 feet so it would cross Jefferson/National elevated, and

b) essentially "move the goal posts" to force a grade separation at Washington/National, by pushing the future Venice/Robertson station a few hundred feet east.

Both streets have less vehicular traffic than streets left at-grade in South LA. Crossings in South LA directly adjacent to parks where children play. Crossings in South LA directly adjacent to schools.

MTA chose not to apply the high standard they're using in Culver City throughout the entire line and the result is a disparate design where the bulk of the safety risks are placed in South LA, while comparatively Culver City assumes no risk.

The Fix Expo campaign supports the efforts of Culver City to fight for grade separations that eliminate the safety hazards and other adverse environmental impacts of Phase 1 of the Expo Line. But if grade separations are to be given to Culver City they must be given to South LA too.

The Solution

MTA is building a 1/2-mile trench at Figueroa by USC. Fix Expo believes the environmental justice issues that currently exist on Expo Phase 1 can be addressed by extending the trench 4 miles to La Brea.

Parks Defends Blue Line Accidents

2007-11-02T09:13:00.000-07:00

Apparently, the Expo Authority has shifted their strategy from denying they're building another Blue Line through South LA to promoting the safety record of the Blue Line, which remains the most accident-prone and deadly light rail line in the country. The overwhelming majority of the accidents have occurred in the segment designed exactly like the Expo Line from Downtown LA to Arlington.

At the Expo Authority board meeting, just minutes after they unanimously approved a measure to study what they've already studied (costs to grade separate Farmdale), Bernard Parks gave a 5 minute speech promoting the safety of the Blue Line and efforts of MTA. In his speech Bernie get the facts wrong. There have been 172 accidents and 28 deaths on the Blue in the past 5 years, and over 796 accidents and 88 deaths in the 17 years of operation. The low over that span of time was 27 in 2005, and the high was 40 in 2004. (SOURCE: MTA's own Summary of Blue Line Train/Vehicle and Train/Pedestrian Accidents)

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Here is a picture from one of the Blue Line accidents on the Flower Street portion just 6 weeks ago:

And last December, here is the collision with the fire truck at a crossing exactly designed as the Expo Blvd portion from just west of Figueroa to just east of Arlington, where purportedly according to Parks and the MTA all the safety enhancement that can be implemented for an at-grade crossing has been implemented.

Here are pictures of the victims (passengers on the Blue Line) of MTA's mistake to not grade separate the crossing (courtesy the LAFD):

At-grade crossings with trains that are scheduled to operate 240 times a day at speeds between 35-55 mph are accidents waiting to happen. MTA knows it, Councilman Parks knows it, and they're willing to accept it near our schools, parks and in our communities.

Call Councilman Parks and ask him why he refuses to stand up for the safety of the children, pedestrians and motorists of Los Angeles:

Email: councilmember.parks@lacity.org

City Hall
200 North Spring Street
Room 460
Los Angeles, CA 90012
213-473-7008 (Phone)
213-485-7683 (Fax)

District Office
3847 S. Crenshaw Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90008
323-293-9467 (Phone)
323-293-3696 (Fax)

UPDATE: Waiting to hear back from the USDOT as to whether they consider the widely recognized Guidance on Traffic Control Devices at Highway-Rail Grade Crossings and definition of life cycle cost "dated," along with information on their secret government transit funding program called "Fresh Starts."

Here is the initial letter requesting Thorpe defend his constant use of the Gold Line analogy: Clarifying Expo Line Comparisons (70K pdf).

Here's Thorpe's reply: Thorpe's Reply to Clarifying Expo Line Comparisons (87K)
(To summarize, "I will not admit I am building a Blue Line...I will not admit I am building a Blue Line...")

Nonetheless, Bernie seems to have forgotten that when presented the Thorpe reply openly during the public comment period at the August Expo board meeting, Yvonne Burke directed Thorpe to actually answer the questions.

What an utterly desperate attempt to reply to the political blow back of his refusal to stand up for the safety of the children and people in his district.

Local Press Picking Up On the Story

2007-10-28T07:50:00.000-07:00

We're getting traction in the local press on the issue.

Front page of The Wave: Residents tussle with MTA over Expo safety concerns

Bernard Parks' "SHUT UP! Moment" was highlighted in Betty Pleasant's Weekly editorial, Soulvine

OurWeekly: Proposed Expo Line Under Fire

Our editorial ran in The Front Page Online: Expo Environmental Racism Is Charged — And Parks Waves It Away

MTA Can Do Little to Boost Crossing Safety, Study Finds

2007-10-23T13:42:00.000-07:00

That was the headline in the Los Angeles Times in 2000.

And since the article there have been 35 deaths and hundreds more accidents on the Blue Line. You don't have to read long to understand why the article is highlighted here.

MTA Can Do Little to Boost Crossing Safety, Study Finds
By DOUGLAS P. SHUIT, Times Staff Writer

February 22, 2000

If anyone should know the dangers of the Metro Blue Line inside and out, it would be Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke.

As head of the powerful Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Burke plays a leading role in setting policy for operating the Blue Line, whose trains operate along city streets and have killed 53 people since it opened in 1990. That is by far the most deaths for any light rail line in the state and is believed to be the most in the nation.

And, as someone who lives and works in the area served by the Blue Line, Burke regularly experiences the anxiety motorists face when crossing the tracks. Getting caught inside the gates when a train comes is a constant fear.

"I have not actually been stuck [inside the gates], but I have been concerned about getting stuck," she said. "If there is any traffic ahead of you as you start going across, there is a tremendous potential of getting caught. So, I tell you...I fly across the tracks."

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Burke's comments are informative because the MTA, after a two-month in-house safety analysis, is essentially moving forward with its current Blue Line policy, which she indicates will not make her feel much safer.

Burke and others on the MTA's board of directors are finding that there are few dramatic moves they can make to improve safety on the heavily used rail line, which provides riders with as many as 57,000 trips a day on the 22-mile run between downtown Los Angeles and Long Beach.

The analysis, prompted by the deaths of six people Nov. 27 and Times stories exploring safety issues on the Blue Line, included an estimate that creating a grade separation--in effect, moving the tracks off the street--would cost as much as $1.6 billion. That is far more than the district can afford, and represents roughly twice the Blue Line's original construction cost.

That leaves MTA managers with a game plan that involves continuing the same policies that they have been following for years, with some tweaking here and there.

In an effort to reduce the number of so-called "S" turns, in which motorists use open traffic lanes to drive around closed traffic gates, the MTA plans to install four gates, rather than the conventional two, at as many as two crossings a year. Traffic signals also will be upgraded. And a stepped-up program of televised, public safety announcements, movie trailers, radio messages, billboards and school safety programs will be implemented.

At Imperial Highway, where there have been a number of accidents involving Blue Line trains, the city of Los Angeles, county, MTA and Caltrans are jointly financing construction of a $20-million bridge for motor vehicle traffic over the railroad tracks.

The MTA's safety program also would apply to the first phase of the 13.7-mile Pasadena light rail line. The Pasadena line is being built at street level, so will face similar traffic problems during its run through Lincoln Heights, Highland Park, South Pasadena and Pasadena. The line is being built by the Pasadena Blue Line Construction Authority, but is being financed and will be operated by the MTA.

During a hearing on Blue Line issues before the MTA's operations committee last week, Burke made a point of saying that the best chance of paying for grade separations comes during construction, because once a system is built the costs become prohibitive. Still, although she made it clear that she thinks grade separations would save lives, she said the MTA doesn't have money for grade separations on that system.

Residents along the proposed Pasadena route are becoming increasingly restive. Jim Leong, a retired businessman representing the Mount Washington Assn., pleaded for a grade separation during the operations committee hearing, although the Pasadena Blue Line Construction Authority has rejected the possibility of major changes to the project.

The Mount Washington Assn. is reconsidering its conditional support for the Pasadena rail line, in large part because of the Los Angeles line's safety record, Leong said. "When the Pasadena line was planned, we didn't have the experience of the Los Angeles Blue Line. Now we have 53 deaths. That is scaring some people," Leong said.

Richard Thorpe, chief executive officer of the Pasadena Blue Line Construction Authority, said he believes conditions on the Eastside are different from those on the Los Angeles-to-Long Beach line.

For one thing, the Pasadena line will not have freight trains running alongside its own trains, as does the Los Angeles line, Thorpe said. Nor will there be streets running parallel to the trains. Some of those who have studied the Los Angeles line believe the slowness of the Union Pacific freight trains frustrates motorists and causes them to take risks they might not ordinarily take. Left turns in front of trains are a leading contributor to Los Angeles Blue Line accidents.

MTA authorities have consistently argued that they believe the large number of deaths and injuries on the Los Angeles Blue Line is caused by risky behavior by pedestrians and motorists, who flout traffic laws and warning signals as they cross in front of trains.

An analysis of Blue Line accident records by The Times indicated that speed may be a contributor. It found that 85% of the deaths have occurred in the high-speed corridor, where trains go through intersections at 55 mph. An analysis comparing the Blue Line with light rail systems across the country found that the MTA trains operate at one of the highest average rates of speed. The Times also found that the last 18 deaths have all involved trains traveling south, whose speed tends to be higher through intersections.

MTA safety chief Paul Lennon, who put together the in-house analysis, said after the operations committee hearing that he is not recommending any changes in the speed of trains. He made it clear he still believes the main problem is that people go around closed crossing gates or ignore warning signals and horns. MTA investigations have held victims to have been at fault in all cases.

"The 55-mph speed I think is a very reasonable safe transit speed," he said. Influencing his belief is a fear that if the trains are slowed appreciably, the riders will return to cars. "My concern is that people might get off that train, find a $200 car and become a statistic someplace else. We are in the lifesaving business, as far as I am concerned."

Lennon said the MTA will continue to look into factors contributing to the string of accidents on the southbound tracks.

Burke said she is not satisfied with the steps Lennon is recommending. She said further steps must be taken "to prevent some of these accidents," but had no concrete proposals. Although the costs are prohibitive, she said, "I believe we have to look at some alternative for grade separation."

Bernard Parks' "SHUT UP!" Moment

2007-10-21T18:36:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, The Wave columnist Betty Pleasant reported on the disconnect Bernard Parks has with his constituents, harping on a moment at a recent community meeting, where one of Parks' chief deputies told a constituent before an audience of 150 to "SHUT UP!" Twice.

It's clear that the staff's shortcomings when it comes to respecting the people who they've been put in office to represent, let alone address constituent concerns rots from the head.

After being asked how people could contact him about the concerns they have with the line by one of the Fix Expo leaders, who also happens to be one of the most knowledgeable and well-known rail transit advocates in the region, and the Co-Chair of the area's neighborhood council, Parks responded, "Just because you don't like the line, you should stop wasting other people's time because you have a concern about it."

How sad that Council Parks considers fighting for the safety of our children, environmental justice, and community preservation, a waste of people's time.

Parks then goes on to say he refused to attend the community forum on this issue (nor send a staff member) because he was "busy."

Councilman Parks can be contacted:
Email: councilmember.parks@lacity.org

City Hall
200 North Spring Street
Room 460
Los Angeles, CA 90012
213-473-7008 (Phone)
213-485-7683 (Fax)

District Office
3847 S. Crenshaw Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90008
323-293-9467 (Phone)
323-293-3696 (Fax)

Accidents and Deaths are Certain

2007-10-21T17:30:00.000-07:00

In response to the Los Angeles Times article this Sunday, let's recap the main evidence/arguments for why the Expo Line is not designed to operate safely.

1) Blue Line: Over 796 accidents and 88 deaths to date.

MTA publishes it's Summary of Metro Blue Line Train/Vehicle and Train/Pedestrian Accidents every 3 months (that tells you how frequently the collisions occur). 76% of the accidents are in the portion of the Blue Line that is identical in design to the Expo Line through most of South LA, in an area with greater residential density, more vehicular traffic, and more expected ridership.

2) The Booz-Allen Hamilton study on the cause of Blue Line Accidents

The Booz-Allen Hamilton report is clearly the most damaging and conclusive document we've uncovered to date. It is study the MTA commissioned back in 1998 that explained why the Blue Line was the deadliest and most accident-prone light rail line in the country. The major points are expanded in a previous post. They are primarily the Blue Line's high ridership (which leads to more activity around the station locations and places pressure on the operators to maintain service), residential density of the area which the train travels.

Applying that knowledge to the Expo Line and it is clear that the MTA is callously repeating a proven defective design. The MTA knows the Expo Line will be a killer:

continue reading...

a) Using MTA's own predictions, the ridership per mile for the Expo Line is expected to be nearly 30% higher, meaning there will be more traffic and activity around the station locations. (The Blue Line ridership is 75K/22 miles or 3.4K riders/mile, while the Expo is expected to be 75K riders/15 miles or 5K riders/mile).

b) The residential density is higher along the Exposition Blvd Corridor.

c) There is substantial truck traffic and light industrial property along the Exposition Blvd Corridor. In fact, in a letter from a civil engineering firm to the Expo Authority, they pointed out how the design of the Hauser crossings was inadequate to allow their trucks to access the properties and would lead to backing up of cars and trucks on the tracks, while the train is approaching at 55 mph.

3) LADOT's documents.

The same day we presented a strongly worded letter to the MTA Board and press that was written by LADOT General Manager and directed to the Expo Authority, the Mayor fired Gloria Jeff for "undisclosed reasons." Our op-ed on the subject ran in OurWeekly. Succinctly, Jeff said the MTA's Management Plan for USC/Expo Park/Coliseum events was fatally flawed, "not safe for pedestrians," would lead to "major gridlock," and was "unacceptable to LADOT." (full letter here)

4) State and Federal Criteria

The Expo Line design violates numerous state and federal criteria for safe rail travel, as specified in the 108 combined pages of our opening and reply briefs, which Commissioner Simon labeled vague (I wish I were making this up). Page 7 to 27 in our reply brief highlights the criteria and how they have failed to be applied to this line.

The facts are clear:

The Expo Line is NOT designed to operate safely.
Our political leaders need to join with LaMotte and stand up for the safety of their constituents, including the former head of the agency responsible to serve and protect the public (Bernard Parks).

LA Times: Expo Line plan runs into resistance

2007-10-21T09:08:00.000-07:00

Read today's article in the Los Angeles Times to get the view of how the forum last Wednesday: Expo Line Plan Runs Into Resistance. The community did not respond favorably to the "Dorsey holding pen," the absence of Burke and Parks (isn't that guy supposed to be running for Supervisor), nor Wesson's refusal to stand up for the safety of the children. We'll be uploading more footage from the forum over the next couple of weeks.

Some of the details need clarifying. ECU protested all 34 crossings (they were throughout 10 applications). The PUC Commissioner of the case, Timothy Simon, who oversees the case, ordered the presiding officer, Judge Koss, to not allow an evidentiary hearing (where all the facts can be presented and we can cross examine Expo Authority's "facts") on all but the Farmdale application. How much of his decision was based on the facts and arguments of the case (click here to read our briefs), and how much of it is based on expediency and political pressure is to be determined (lots more on that throughout this week).

We will be appealing the decision by Commissioner Simon this week. But if denied at this stage, we don't intend to go away. We will not allow another Blue Line to be built through South LA. The Expo Line will be built right. We're going to fight for as long and as far as is necessary to Fix the Expo Line. And legal battles can take a while...

To read the full text of the article if the above link isn't working, continue reading...

Expo Line plan meets resistance
By Howard Blume and Jeffrey L. Rabin
October 21, 2007 in print edition B-1

Dorsey High School is the focal point of an increasingly heated fight between transit officials determined to build a light-rail line from downtown Los Angeles to the Westside, and Crenshaw District residents who fear that fast-moving trains will threaten the safety of students crossing the tracks.

The first leg of the rail line, scheduled to open in 2010, will run near the 2,000-student high school where at 3:08 p.m. most weekdays, chaos reigns.

After school, hundreds of students flood across the intersection of Exposition Boulevard and Farmdale Avenue, walking home or awaiting pickup. Ice cream trucks beckon. Cars wait six-deep in all directions, sometimes blocking traffic when they pull up to and away from the curb. Students walk or run past the scene or loiter under the mature pepper trees in the boulevard’s grassy median – an old railroad right-of-way that soon will become the path for trains carrying commuters between downtown L.A. and Culver City.

Critics insist that running trains at 35 mph across the intersection is unsafe. To avoid potential collisions between trains, students and motorists, they want the tracks built above or below ground, but not at street level. To do anything less, in their view, is environmental racism.

“This project is unfair to this community and the students who live here,” said Beverly Manuel, Dorsey’s dean of students, as she helped police the mass exodus Thursday. “If this were anyplace else, changing this design would not be an issue.”

Opponents of the design note that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board last month approved spending an extra $23.3 million to add a station at USC/Exposition Park and to pay for safety improvements at several points along the Expo Line route.

But transit officials say they only have the money to pay for a street-level crossing at Dorsey. To elevate the rail line across the intersection would cost at least an extra $25 million, further straining the Expo Line project’s $663.3-million budget.

Richard Thorpe, chief executive of the Exposition Metro Line Construction Authority, said the intersection will be much safer than it is now with the installation of traffic lights, wider sidewalks, warning lights, bells and barriers to prevent people and cars from crossing the twin tracks when a train is approaching.

Thorpe points to an excellent safety record on MTA’s Gold Line, which runs near schools between downtown L.A. and Pasadena.

The bureaucracy of the Los Angeles Unified School District, belatedly, is joining the public debate. After several years of restrained analyses, district officials have been stirred to action by community activists who have appealed to school administrators, visited school board members and taken over a local neighborhood council.

The construction authority cannot lay tracks across intersections along the rail line without the approval of the state Public Utilities Commission, which has jurisdiction over safety at railroad crossings.

After touring the route and reviewing the record, Timothy Alan Simon, a commissioner on the public utilities board, last week rejected community protests and gave preliminary approval for running trains across nine intersections along Exposition Boulevard. The lone exception was the Dorsey crossing.

Simon, a San Francisco attorney and former appointments secretary to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, said he wanted to hear the Crenshaw community’s concerns.

“The speed of the trains through the crossing is a safety issue,” he said.

Simon has scheduled a public hearing Nov. 5 at Dorsey. The following day in Culver City, the commissioner and an administrative law judge will hold a formal evidentiary hearing on whether or not to allow the construction authority to proceed with the street-level crossing.

The Dorsey crossing is the last on an 8.6-mile route that is still awaiting state regulatory approval, even though activists also have filed formal objections to the street-level design elsewhere. The tracks will lie within 100 feet of five schools and close to nine others.

Construction of the rail line and other transit projects has become a major goal of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and other elected officials in the area. But the Expo Line now entails political as well as potential safety risks.

Resistance to the project’s design is deepening, especially in the minority neighborhoods that surround Dorsey, one of a handful of Los Angeles high schools that remain predominantly black.

All those elements came to the fore Wednesday night at a community forum that drew more than 100 people to the school’s auditorium.

Damien Goodmon, a community activist who has spearheaded opposition to the Expo Line’s design, told the crowd that “Dorsey is the poster child for all that is wrong with this project.”

Goodmon noted that the rail line will run in a fenced-off trench for several blocks near USC and that Culver City officials have demanded an above-ground station in their community. He also accused construction authority officials of having a double standard about safety.

L.A. Unified board member Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte likened the dispute to a latter-day civil rights struggle.

“Nothing will happen that you don’t want to happen in our community if you stand together,” she said.

LaMotte vowed to oppose the Expo Line project unless changes were made to protect the safety of Dorsey students.

Steve J. Bagby Sr., president of the Dorsey High Alumni Assn., urged the crowd to get involved but also emphasized that critics were not opposed to the transit project.

“Everybody is for the Expo Line. We just want it to be safe,” he said.

A stream of speakers joined the critics.

“Environmental racism is alive and well,” said Michelle Colbert, a member of a local neighborhood council. She challenged City Councilman Herb Wesson, who was the only public official who has a say in the Expo Line matter to attend the forum.

“Councilman Wesson, you’ve got to do something. You have to stand up for the people,” Colbert said.

A sometimes-flustered Wesson pointed out that USC did not get all its requested concessions.

Wesson is a voting member and vice chairman of the Exposition Construction Authority’s board of directors, which approved the street-level design.

The councilman, who once held the powerful post of state Assembly speaker, upset many in the crowd when he said that even if he became the one vote on the seven-member Exposition board to oppose the current design, it would not accomplish anything.

The construction authority’s board members include City Councilman Bernard C. Parks, county Supervisors Yvonne B. Burke and Zev Yaroslavsky, and other elected officials.

Parks, Burke and Yaroslavsky also sit on the board of the MTA, which has ultimate authority over spending for the Expo Line and will operate the trains. None of them attended the community forum, but all voted last month for safety enhancements near USC and Los Angeles Trade Tech College.

Villaraigosa, another key player, missed the vote on the USC alterations. The mayor controls four seats on the 13-member MTA board.

“Obviously, the health and safety of the people living along the Expo Line are important and a top priority for me and the MTA,” he said Friday.

Last spring, Burke asked Thorpe to present options for dealing with safety concerns at Dorsey.

Thorpe told reporters that three options were considered: the street-level crossing; a pedestrian bridge over the tracks that would cost $5 million; and running the trains over the intersection on an aerial structure. The last option would cost at least an extra $25 million, he said.

Thorpe said the added USC/Exposition Park station addressed concerns about how to handle crowds from a major event, such as a football game at the nearby Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

Thorpe said the MTA had agreed to slow the trains from 55 mph to 35 mph at Dorsey before and after school. Barriers would lower to block off the tracks for passing trains, which won’t stop at the intersection.

Retired Teamsters union official Jimmy Smith countered: “A train at 55 mph or 35 mph will kill you just as dead.”

Critics cited the recent collision of a Gold Line train traveling at 20 mph and an SUV that ran through a closed crossing gate in Highland Park as evidence of the potential danger of the Dorsey crossing. Community activist Goodmon said the SUV “crumpled like a potato chip bag.”

Back at the intersection of Exposition and Farmdale, a fight broke out at 3:15 p.m. Thursday between two girls. A van screeched to a halt to avoid hitting a police officer who dashed over to break things up. Some students ran over to watch. Others lined up at the ice cream trucks. Younger students, from an elementary school north of Exposition, crossed unsupervised. An older boy skateboarded down the middle of Farmdale. Another student, riding a bike without a helmet, shot through the intersection, ignoring stop signs.

“Kids are kids,” said Manuel, Dorsey’s dean of students. “You will have students who will try to beat the train. Someone is going to end up being killed right here on this spot.”

–
jeffrey.rabin@latimes.com
howard.blume@latimes.com

Online Petition

2007-10-20T23:28:00.000-07:00

Now in addition to the downloadable petition, an online version is available. Click here.

BREAKING NEWS: LAUSD School Board Member LaMotte Announces Resolution Opposing At-Grade Expo Line

2007-10-19T11:03:00.001-07:00

Referencing the separate and unequal design and citing the safety of the children, said she would introduce a resolution opposing the at-grade design and supporting the below grade alternative. The Board Member exclaimed, "You can't put a dollar sign on the [lives of] students at Foshay and the students at Dorsey."

Comparatively, see Wesson's response to a request for him to use his powers to protect the children, elderly, disabled and motorists:

You can contact Councilman Wesson's Office at:

Email: councilmember.wesson@lacity.org

City Hall Office
200 North Spring Street, Room 430
Los Angeles, CA 90012
(213) 473-7010
Fax (213) 485-9829

District Office
1819 S. Western Ave.
Los Angeles, Ca 90006
(323) 733-8233
Fax (323) 733-5833

Important Community Safety Forum - WEDNESDAY

2007-10-17T11:14:00.000-07:00

In response to the questions and concern building in the community and schools about the safety of the Expo Line through South LA, the West Adams Neighborhood Council and Dorsey HS Alumni Association are hosting a community forum for parents, alumni, teachers, community members, and interested parties at Dorsey HS Wednesday, October 17, 2007 at 6:30 to 8:30 pm at Dorsey HS Auditorium at 3537 Farmdale Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90016 (map)

The Expo Authority will present the project as they see it, we will present the problems and how to fix them, LAUSD OEHS will update us on the work their office is doing, and the LAUSD Parent Collaborative will explain why they've opposed the line. Thereafter the politicians will speak (Board Member LaMotte is confirmed, and Councilmen Wesson may come).

Be there.

UPDATE: Download the flyer here
UPDATE: BUMPED!

LAUSD OEHS Fires Back at Expo

2007-10-17T11:10:00.000-07:00

The Expo Authority is fond of saying that the many smoking memos we've uncovered showing concern/opposition to the unsafe defective design of the street level Expo Line from agencies that have not protested the crossings through the PUC process (PUC engineers, LADOT and LAUSD) mean the agencies endorse the design.

In response to this assertion, the LAUSD Office of Environmental Health and Safety set the record straight and in the process revealed exactly the type of tactics the MTA/Expo Authority has been employed. In the letter OEHS states:

"The recent Response Document issued by the Exposition Construction Authority misrepresents the position of the District, as it states that "With these additional mitigations, LAUSD and Dorsey High School are in agreement with the pedestrian at-grade crossing concept submitted as part of the Expo Construction Authority's CPUC application for Farmdale Avenue." We must make it clear that LAUSD-OEHS believes that the safest solution to potential pedestrian-train conflicts at the Exposition Blvd/Farmdale Ave. intersection is to grade-separate this crossing. However, in discussion with the Expo Authority, we were informed that this approach was not feasible, and would not be considered further."

In the Expo Authority crossing applications and briefs before the PUC, there is no explanation as to why a grade separation is not feasible (defined as "physically capable"). Only that it would be more expensive.

Up to 30 trains Per Hour - Passing Dorsey HS at 55 mph

2007-10-16T13:21:00.001-07:00

We've uploaded the Expo Authority's document from March of 2007 that verifies that Metro is planning to run the train with 4 minute frequencies in both directions during peak hours. (link) That equals 15 trains per direction, or 30 trains per hour.

On page two of the response to the PUC engineers' protest of the initial crossing designs at Trade Tech, Expo Authority responds:

In case the image isn't working here's what it reads:

"Metro plans to have the following train schedules: 4 minute services for peak periods, 10 minute service for mid-day, and 20 minute services for early morning and night time. Therefore, a total of about 240 trains per day (both directions) will be crossing these eight crossings."

And the actual excerpt from the Expo Authority's crossing application at Farmdale is uploaded, which shows that Expo Authority has applied, and if approved as designed, will get authority to operate trains at 55 mph pass Dorsey HS where over 1800 students walk across in surges daily.

Our Op-Ed In Our Weekly

2007-10-16T11:58:00.000-07:00

Our press release on the firing of Gloria Jeff ran in this week's Our Weekly: Was Gloria Jeff Fired for Opposing the Rail Line?

The short explanation is that on Thursday September 27th, leaders representing 8 different homeowners associations, 5 community organizations, and 2 neighborhood councils protested the MTA proposal to add $18 million dollars to the Expo Line budget for the OPTIONAL USC station at Trousdale and track improvements on the portion of the Expo Line which it is to share with the Blue Line. (audio to come) We have consistently and vocally requested additional funding or alternative construction options so that the Expo Line can be made safe with grade separation, and offered our organizational support for any and all efforts to pursue additional funding. Each and every time we're told by Expo Authority staff and board members, "We don't have the money." (Incidentally, they never say, "We can't find the money.")

Nonetheless, Metro, with it's 3 billion dollar annual budget and $7 billion dollars in assets, found $18 million for the station and track improvements with a vote that passed almost unanimously, and received support from Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke, who represents all of the South LA schools and Councilman Bernard Parks, whose district includes 3800-student Foshay Learning Center which is within 50 feet of the tracks. You couldn't ask for a better illustration of our elected official's misplaced priorities and lack of concern for the safety of South LA children.

So how does Jeff fit into all of this?

Prior to the vote, during the public comment period, we submitted a packet to the board members and press that included 16 of the numerous smoking memos we've uncovered illustrating internal Metro/Expo and agency concern and outright opposition to the predictable deadly unsafe design of the Expo Line. At the top of the packet was Gloria Jeff's letter to the MTA/Expo Authority regarding the Exposition Park plans and designs at Exposition Park, dated just one week after the MTA submitted their crossing applications to the regulatory agency responsible for approving all rail crossings. In the letter, Jeff says, the event management plan would lead to "major gridlock," is "unsafe for pedestrians," and is "unacceptable to LADOT." The next day Jeff she was fired for undisclosed reasons.

Firing Jeff because of or in part due to her refusal to tow the company line on Expo would be completely consistent with the damage control strong arm tactics Metro/Expo have employed.

Update: link, with more on that to come.

In case the link above doesn't work, continue reading...

Was LADOT head Gloria Jeff fired for opposing the rail line?
OurWeekly

At last Thursday morning's MTA board meeting, leaders of South Los Angeles homeowners' associations, neighborhood councils and school alumni groups, along with child advocates protested the unsafe design of the Expo Line through their majority-minority communities. Among the "smoking memos" they submitted to the board supporting their belief that the light rail line is not designed to operate safely through South L.A. was a letter from LADOT General Manager Gloria Jeff to Expo Authority CEO Rick Thorpe. In the May 18, 2007 letter, Jeff states that the MTA plan to operate the Expo Line during Exposition Park/Coliseum events would lead to "major gridlock," are fatally flawed, "not safe for pedestrians," and "not acceptable to LADOT." According to the LA Times, Thursday night Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told his transportation chief to submit her resignation by Friday afternoon or she would be fired. Jeff was terminated on Friday for undisclosed reasons.

The Jeff letter was sent to Thorpe just days after the Expo Line Construction Authority, a subsidiary of the MTA that has been contracted to design and build the Expo Line, submitted their intersection designs for approval to the California Public Utilities Commission, the agency responsible for the safety of all railroad crossings. The CPUC review process allows community groups to protest design applications if there are safety concerns and enter into a legal proceeding that can delay rail projects for up to 2 years to allow the designs to be more heavily scrutinized.

Expo Communities United, a collaborative of several South LA homeowners' associations protested all of the crossing applications, believing the Expo Line will be more dangerous than the MTA's Blue Line - the deadliest light rail line in the country. Several large schools and parks are within 50 feet of the proposed Expo Line tracks, and traffic congestion, population density and other demographics present more intense conditions than the unsafe crossings on the Blue Line, which have resulted in 88 deaths and over 795 accidents to date.

In their opening and reply briefs in the CPUC protest proceedings, ECU cited Jeff's letter along with other critical documents from LADOT staff, all of which were provided to ECU by the Expo Authority through a Public Records Act request.

"We've uncovered numerous memos from engineers and staff that reveal a lot of internal criticism of the Expo Line," said Damien Goodmon, a rail transit advocate and coordinator of the Citizen's Campaign to Fix the Expo Rail Line, of which ECU is a lead member.

Goodmon continued, "These bureaucrats are saying something completely different behind agency doors than they are in the public. It's their Baghdad Bob communications strategy: regardless of how bad things look, regardless of how many kids the staff thinks will be killed, they tell the public things are under control and the Expo Line is safe. I can't help thinking Expo Authority gave us the letter, which they knew we'd use, as part of their effort to get the Mayor to fire Jeff, a vocal critic who refused to tow the company line."

"Clearly they're sending a signal: don't mess with Expo," said ECU founding member and Baldwin Neighborhood Homeowners Association President Carol Tucker. Referencing an August 14, 2007 letter CPUC Commissioner Timothy Simon sent to seven local legislators in response to the politicians' concerns about the CPUC's time consuming review process, Ms. Tucker said, "They're already pressuring Simon to approve the defective unsafe street-level rail crossing designs." In the letter, Simon, the Commissioner assigned to the Expo Line case, advised the legislators, "I have asked all of our staff including, but not limited to Administrative Law Judge Koss, to expedite this process. Again, I consider this of the highest priority." Tucker expressed concern about politicians interfering with the decision-making process of judges and a state regulatory agency.

"I'm just wondering who's next," Tucker said. "A lot of those critical statements and documents are from staff people that are a lot easier to terminate than a person as high-profile as Gloria Jeff."

The removal of Jeff by Mayor Villaraigosa hasn't deterred the community coalition. Instead they intend to ramp up their efforts to shine a light on the Expo Line problems so they can be addressed.

"Today, we're submitting another discovery request to the Expo Authority and MTA for all communication between them and Jeff and LADOT," said founding ECU member and West Adams Neighborhood Council Public Safety Chair Clint Simmons. Mr. Simmons continued, "The South L.A. community is being railroaded here with this Expo Line. They know that by operating the train at street-level they're going to kill kids and the few people like Jeff, with the courage to say it are being thrown out. But we're going to get to the bottom of this. We're going to continue speaking for the silenced engineers; we're going to fix the Expo Line for the safety of our children and preservation of our community."

The Dorsey High School Alumni Association has invited the Citizen's Campaign to Fix the Expo Line to discuss the Expo Line problems and solutions at a community safety forum for parents, alumni and community members at Dorsey High School Auditorium, 3537 Farmdale Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90016, on Oct. 17, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.. All local elected officials as well as the MTA Executive/Expo Authority CEO Rick Thorpe have been invited.

Our October 16 E-Newsletter

2007-10-16T06:59:00.000-07:00

Citizen's Campaign to Fix the Expo Rail Line

A grassroots effort led by Save Leimert Neighborhood Coalition and Expo Communities United

P.O. Box 8508 * Los Angeles, CA 90008 * FAX: (323) 295-9467 * www.FixExpo.org

OCTOBER UPDATE – October 16, 2007

Expo Line Forum TODAY - BE THERE!

The West Adams Neighborhood Council, Dorsey Alumni Association and neighborhood organizations are hosting an important community safety forum on the Expo Light Rail Line through South LA, TODAY, Wednesday, Oct. 17 from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm at Dorsey High School Auditorium at 3537 Farmdale Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90016. (You can download the flyer here.)

The MTA/Expo Authority will be there to answer questions in a open public forum. (We can assume one of them will be, "Why do you want to run a 225-ton train within 20 feet of Dorsey HS at 55 mph up to 30 times per hour?") Our organization will present the problems we see with the light rail line and the LAUSD Office of Environmental Health and Safety, and the LAUSD Parent Collaborative will speak as well.

Your presence is needed not only to learn more about the problems with the project and how to fix them, but to show all who will be looking on – the politicians and media - that the community is really concerned about the rail line coming through South LA at street level (known as "at grade"). School Board Member Marguerite LaMotte is confirmed to attend and we're expecting no less than five media outlets and possibly Councilman Herb Wesson.

We're on the Web! www.FixExpo.org

We're now live on the web at www.FixExpo.org. Bookmark it and stop by regularly to keep up to date on this issue and view the numerous memos, videos and audio that expose the deficiencies of the Expo Line as currently designed. Go there now to view the surge of Dorsey students who cross at Farmdale & Exposition after school everyday (link) and read some of the countless smoking memos we've uncovered.

We're in the News! Pick Up this week's Our Weekly

Our press release "Was LADOT Head Gloria Jeff fired for Opposing the Expo Rail Line" was published in it's entirety in this week's Our Weekly (link). The day before Jeff was fired, representatives from over 8 homeowners associations, 5 community based organizations and 2 neighborhood councils spoke at the monthly MTA Board Meeting to protest adding $18 million dollars to the Expo Line construction for an optional USC station and track improvements in the portion of the Blue Line that the Expo Line is proposed to share. (The MTA has the money for an optional USC station and upgrades to Blue Line tracks, but they won't pay for underpasses in South LA??? Right in front of our schools???? WHERE ARE THEIR PRIORITIES?!)

Among the documents we presented to the board and press to illustrate that the Expo Line is not designed to be safe was a strongly worded letter from Jeff to MTA. In the letter she states that the Expo Line design is fatally flawed, "not safe for pedestrians," "not acceptable to LADOT," and would lead to "major gridlock" (click here to read the full letter). The next day Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa fired the African-American general manager for undisclosed reasons.

The Petition Drive Continues

The Save Leimert team was out in full force at last Saturday's Taste of Soul, collecting over 500 signatures from concerned citizens throughout the region, in just a few hours! From as far out as Oceanside and Lancaster to right in Jefferson Park everyone agrees: the Expo Line must be built correctly through South LA! Thank you to all who signed and participated.

Help continue the momentum. DOWNLOAD THE PETITION (link) and circulate it within your home, workplace, church and organizations. (You don't have to be a registered voter). There is strength in numbers.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." -Margaret Mead

Booz-Allen Hamilton Study

2007-09-28T15:10:00.000-07:00

In 1998, in response to the high frequency of Blue Line accidents, the MTA commissioned a study conducted by engineering firm Booz-Allen, Hamilton, Inc. to evaluate the cause of the incidents on the most-deadly and accident-prone light rail line in the country. The full text of the study is here

The major points, related to the Expo Line are found in section 1.4 of the report, titled What Makes the Metro Blue Different from Other Light Rail Systems?:

"One aspect of this study is to analyze those factors that may contribute to the MBL's high accident rate as compared to other light rail systems. There are several factors that contribute to the accident rate including:

"1. The MBL travels through a high population density area with a diverse varied social-economic community. The high density results in increased pedestrian and automobile traffic as compared to other transit properties. In addition, the communities through which the MBL travels requires special attention to language and literacy issues when disseminating public outreach and education information."

"2. The MBL traverses through an industrial center of Los Angeles. The industrial center results in increased trucking and shipping traffic near the MBL. The increased truck traffic results in increased driver frustration due to slower street traffic speeds. This frustration may result in increased crossing gate running and illegal left turns."

[snip]

"4. The MBL has one of the highest ridership counts for light rail lines in the Country. This factor is perhaps the most important contributor to the grade crossing accident rate. The high ridership results in increased pedestrian traffic near stations as compared to other light rail systems. In addition, although MTA Operations does not allow high passenger loads dictate safe operations, there is pressure to maintain travel times and headway schedule requirements (e.g., passenger trip from Los Angeles to Long Beach in less than one hour)."

All of these conditions are exacerbated on the Expo Line. The ridership per mile is expected to greater than the Blue Line; the Expo Line passes through areas with slower street traffic speeds and industrial truck traffic as well; and the population densities are greater. It is clear, the MTA is willfully and deliberately making the same mistakes, and have not learned their lesson.

Protests to the PUC

2007-09-27T08:39:00.001-07:00

Opening Brief of Expo Communities United: 264 KB pdf

Reply Brief of Expo Communities United: 212 KB pdf

While we continue to point out the facts the Expo Authority's continues their political damage control campaign: Local Legislators Pressure PUC Commissioner

UPDATE: Conversation with Commissioner Simon's Chief of Staff

Agency Opposition & Reservations

2007-09-27T03:50:00.000-07:00

Here are just a few of the documents and memos the Fix Expo Team has found:

LAUSD

The LAUSD has registered its reservations with the at-grade design of the Expo Line going back at least to 2001. Here are some quick links to the documents:

1) In his comments to the Draft EIR, then Superintendent Roy Romer request a below grade portion from the I-110 to west of Vermont and the LAUSD inter-office memo regarding the large number of bus routes serving many students including special needs kids on the corridor. The comments appear in Volume 2B1 of the Final EIR here on pages 28-35.

2) Shortly after the Final EIR was certified in December 2005, in large part to the proding of some of the founding members of Expo Communities United the LAUSD Office of Environmental Health and Safety sent a formal letter opposing the Expo Line at-grade design: 33KB pdf

3) The Parent Collaborative also submitted their letter of opposition, adding to the concerns of the LAUSD OEHS, the special needs children who would have their learning environments irreparably harmed: 38KB pdf

4) Among OEHS basis for opposition is their Distance Criteria for School Siting, which requires a new school be built no less than 128 feet from a rail line: 36KB pdf

Public Utilities Commission Staff

The PUC Staff has expressed reservations about the MTA Grade Separation Policy numerous times:

1) PUC Staff comments to the Final EIR: 176KB pdf

2) PUC Response to the Preliminary Grade Crossing Hazards Analysis submitted by Expo/Metro: 252KB pdf

3) PUC's comments during the Expo Field Diagnostic Meetings requesting the USC trench be extended beyond Vermont: 276KB pdf

4) PUC's Meeting Minutes regarding problems with the Dorsey High School "holding pen": 172KB pdf

LADOT

Among the sternest concerns are those expressed in the May 17, 2007 letter from Gloria Jeff to Rick Thorpe calling the Expo Park event management plan will "lead to gridlock" and is "unsafe for pedestrians": 92KB pdf

And there's plenty more to be scanned and uploaded.

Fix Expo Videos On YouTube

2007-09-27T00:33:00.000-07:00

Visit our page on YouTube to view some of the relevant videos related to the Expo Line. Lots of footage is currently uploaded including:

-- The afterschool surge of Dorsey High School students that cross the Farmdale/Exposition intersection (up to 105 students PER MINUTE), where the MTA is applying to operate trains at 55 mph with a crossing every 2 minutes and has proposed a "holding pen," which they allege the students will actually use:

-- Cars and trucks caught in the Gold Line crossing gates at Mission Station:

-- Television footage of the two Gold Line crashes in just the past couple of weeks, one which set the train on fire:

The Expo Authority lawyers would probably characterize the flaming train accident as a "fender bender." Just like this Blue Line Flower Street accident on Sept. 17th:

(In their Reply Brief to the Expo Communities United protest before the Public Utilities Commission, the Expo Authority actually claimed that the majority of accidents on the Blue Line in the portion that accounts for over 75% of the accidents on the most accident prone light rail line in the country and is identical in design as the Expo Line were just "fender benders.")

SOON TO COME:

-- Expo Authority staff members denying the request for open public forums at various "project status update" meetings in the Phase 1 communities.

-- Expo CEO Rick Thorpe denying that he is building a line through majority-minority South LA communities identical in design to the most accident-prone section of the Blue Line.

http://www.youtube.com/fixexpo

Why Does the Expo Line Need Fixing?

2007-08-25T03:14:00.000-07:00

All objective observations of the design of the Expo Line in the majority-minority South LA segment reveal countless issues that need to be addressed. Primarily:

Safety

The street-level crossings are guaranteed to result in deaths to motorists & pedestrians, in particular at the many crossings without crossing gates (Crenshaw, Western, Normandie and Vermont). It is the least safe form of light rail transit and most of the safety mitigation measures currently proposed have already been implemented on the Blue Line, yet accidents still frequently occur today – over 17 years of attempting to improve the safety of the line, which is the deadliest light rail line in America.

Nearly two dozen schools, many parks, and 20,000 – 30,000 youths are within walking distance of the Expo Line tracks and are a grave concern. The LAUSD and Parent Collaborative have made formal objections to the unsafe design of the line. Of particular worry are 2100-student Dorsey High School at Farmdale and Exposition and 3800-student Foshay Learning Center at Western and Exposition. The overall environments are currently unsafe with sidewalks and crosswalks that are too narrow to handle existing foot traffic. Adding a frequently running train to the environment and further complicating intersections will only increase the risk to the children.

Similarly, at Crenshaw Blvd the train will travel directly adjacent to a mega church (West Angeles Church). Crenshaw, like Vermont, Normandie and Western (where Foshay is located), has no crossing gates at the intersection. The compilation of these added risk factors should have resulted in underpasses or overpasses (known as “grade separations”) at the locations but did not. A deadly calculation has been made to not invest in grade separations in South LA and instead jeopardize the lives of South LA residents.

Traffic Congestion & Cutting-Off Access to Emergency Services

But even the crossing gates in South LA are problematic. Traffic on our already clogged streets will increase. At 7th Ave & Exposition, the location of Fire Station 34 which serves the Leimert Park community, the crossing gates will shut off emergency service access up to 38% of the time during peak hours to a community with high health risk populations: elderly & African-American.

Environmental Impact of Noise & Vibration

The Expo Line places a very high environmental impact on South LA residential communities, school learning grounds & places of worship. With trains running at a frequency of 4-5 minutes each way, trains can be expected to cross an intersection every 2 – 2 ½ minutes during rush hour. When trains cross any street at-grade they are required to blow their horns or ring it's bell while approaching the intersection & through the intersection.

Environmental Justice

Being aware of the adverse safety, traffic and other environmental impacts of street-level crossings, the City of Culver City passed resolutions opposing MTA's proposed street level crossings in their boundaries in the mid-90s and early 2000s. When MTA's final plan had all street-level crossings Culver City, the city threatened to legally and political oppose the project. After much negotiation, MTA bowed to Culver City's pressures resulting in an Expo Line Phase 1 design that has grade separations in Culver City at crossings with less traffic than South LA streets, and where more money is being spent in the one mile between La Cienega and Robertson, than in the entire 4.5 miles in South LA from Vermont to Clyde (one block east of La Cienega). The end project places none of the adverse impacts or safety risks west of La Cienega, and all of them in majority-minority and/or poor communities. MTA is spending $185 million for the 1 mile west of La Cienega and only $140 million for the 4.5 miles in South LA. This is not only morally reprehensible, but it is clearly prohibited by federal law.

Long-Term Investment

In addition to jeopardizing the safety and quality of life of the South LA community, the MTA is not making a good investment of our tax dollars. With an underground segment through South LA the annual operating cost of the Expo Line would be lower. It would also result in reduced travel times, far more riders and increased capacity for Expo Line branches to places like LAX and UCLA.

THE CITIZENS' SOLUTION

We believe MTA can and should exercise the consecutive operable segment construction option in the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) and begin building the Expo Line underground in the South LA community as far as the existing Phase 1 budget will allow them, while our representatives work together to find the money to complete the project to Culver City.

We believe they can and should go after new public financing sources like recently passed Prop 1B, of which billions are dedicated specifically to capital rail projects and grade separations, and identify more funding from our annual local and federal budgets.

UPDATE: In fact, the MTA has added $222 million dollars to the project, $218 million of which was from the Prop 1B source we've been requesting they go after for additional grade separations in South LA.

Over the next few weeks we will begin to delve in the details regarding our concerns and the merits of our proposal. But ultimately, our ability to FIX EXPO will be greatly improved with your help. So please help us by SIGNING THE PETITION and/or business/community group endorsement, which are available to the right.

What is the Expo Line?

2007-08-25T02:01:00.000-07:00

The Expo Line is an MTA project to construct a light rail line, similar the Metro Blue Line, to connect Downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica. The line is currently broken into two phases. Phase 1 is from Downtown LA to Culver City and is currently funded. Phase 2 is intended to complete the line from Culver City to the beach, but is not yet designed or funded.

Phase 1 has received $862 million dollars in primarily state and local funding and is scheduled to open in 2010. It will be 8.6 miles in length, feature ten stations, two which will be shared by the Blue Line.

The Downtown Segment:
The train will travel south from 7th St Metro Center to 11th Street, sharing the existing Blue Line tunnel under Flower St. South of 11th Street, it continues down the eastern side of Flower to Jefferson Blvd at-street level primarily adjacent to industrial buildings and the I-110 freeway, in a design called side-street running. Just south of Jefferson, at the new USC Galen Center, the train enters a short trench as it turns west to the median of Exposition Blvd where the abandoned railroad tracks currently lay. The railroad tracks are known as a right-of-way (ROW). The train comes out of the trench about a 1000 feet west of Figueroa to the middle of Exposition Blvd traffic, and begins running at street-level, in a design called "median street running" to Vermont.

The South LA Segment:
From Vermont to just east of Arlington the train continues in the middle of Exposition Blvd traffic in median street running. From Arlington to Crenshaw the train will travel on the very narrow right-of-way on the southern side of Exposition with fences and street crossings with crossing gates, a design described as "semi-exclusive." When it reaches Crenshaw however, there are no crossing gates. It continues in a semi-exclusive alignment from Crenshaw to just east of La Brea where it will travel down the middle of big and little Exposition Blvd. The communities from Vermont to just east of La Brea are primarily residential.

The West End/Culver City Segment:
An overpass is at La Brea and it returns to semi-exclusive running down a generously sized ROW until the La Cienega overpass, which extends over Jefferson Blvd and Ballona Creek in the city of Culver City. It then returns to exclusive running (no street crossings) down a generous ROW to the Washington Blvd and National Blvd overpass to the Venice/Robertson terminus.

Station Locations:
Stations are proposed at:
7th/Flower (existing station shared with the Blue Line)
Pico/Flower (existing station shared with the Blue Line)
23rd St/Flower
Jefferson/Flower
Trousdale/Exposition
Vermont/Exposition
Western/Exposition
Crenshaw/Exposition
La Brea/Exposition
La Cienega/Exposition
Venice/Robertson

About the Fix Expo Campaign

2007-08-25T00:01:00.000-07:00

UPDATED in November 2009.

The Citizens' Campaign to Fix the Expo Rail Line (or for short "Fix Expo Rail Campaign" or "Fix Expo") was launched in 2007 to inform our community about the numerous grave deficiencies in the majority-minority South Los Angeles segment of the ~~$640 million~~ ~~$785 million~~ $862 million light rail transit project. Our initial goal was to expand on the efforts of other local grassroots organizations, like Expo Communities United, which had been advocating on this issue for decades, to request our political leadership work to fix the problems so the Expo Line can be a good and safe neighbor to the local community and best benefit the region.

The Fix Expo Rail Campaign is based and organizes in the South Los Angeles segment of the Expo Line corridor, and spawned the incorporation of United Community Associations (UCA), a grassroots South LA nonprofit organization.

Fix Expo has held dozens of community meetings, gone door-to-door on numerous occasions, marched the tracks, met with elected officials, delivered statements and releases, published reports, written op-eds and engaged in several other activities to unite the community, bridge coalitions, and generate awareness of this important issue. One of many important objectives of our effort is to research and deliver agency reports/memos and amplify the concerns expressed by international experts in rail safety and traffic.

Currently, Fix Expo (through our official entity, UCA) is engaged in multiple administrative legal actions against MTA, the prominent one before the CPUC, in an attempt to bring positive changes to the project and system-wide.

The Fix Expo Rail Campaign is led by Save Leimert Neighborhood Coalition, Expo Communities United, Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw Homeowners' Coalition, and several other community-based organizations.

Here's how you can contact the Fix Expo Campaign:
Via e-mail: info@fixexpo.org
Via message center at (323) 761-6435